


TALE OF A MARTYR IN XII PARTS

by redskiesandsailboats



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Grim reaper au, Implied Violence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, POV Neil Josten, Reaper!Andrew, This is so much longer than I thought it would be, aftg reverse big bang 2021, but im not complaining, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:27:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29905248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redskiesandsailboats/pseuds/redskiesandsailboats
Summary: Neil closes his eyes and counts the things that he knows:One: Death has a name.Two: He has met Death before. Several times, in fact.Three: Someone is trying to kill him. Permanently. But it's only kind of working.Or, the one in which Andrew is the Grim Reaper, Neil is very, very good at dying, and they teach each other a few things over the millenia.
Relationships: Kevin Day & Neil Josten, Neil Josten & The Foxes (All For The Game), Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 43
Kudos: 52





	1. On Your Feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chubbytomato](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chubbytomato/gifts).



> Wow ok Greetings lovelies. Welcome. 
> 
> I would like to start with a few quick little disclaimers:  
> This is, in fact, a reincarnation fic, which means there is a lot of main character death, so pls just keep that in mind and take care of yourselves.  
> Also, I am by no means a historian, or an expert, which forces me to conclude that only a minuscule part of this has any hope of being historically accurate, and even then it’s questionable. I like to think that I tried, however futile my attempts may have been. 
> 
> I will probably be updating every day until it is over, unless stated otherwise, and content warnings will be in the beginning notes. 
> 
> Thank you a million times to this-little-lighthouse for catching all the sneakies and commenting with all the key smashes, you're amazing. 
> 
> Also! Go check [THIS](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29899953/chapters/73585365) fic out by [Lyndis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyndis/pseuds/Lyndis) bc it was inspired by the same art and you always need more Grim Reaper Andrew in your life, I don’t make the rules. Speaking of, said glorious art, by none other than infinitesimalthings, will be coming at a later date, to keep you on your toes. 
> 
> Ok I’m done now, so without further ado, grab some water, get comfy, and leave your grip of reality and attachment to canon at the door, we won’t be needing them anymore.

**The Crusades 1097**

I

Nathaniel is dying, and the worst part is, it is fighting in a war that he does not believe in. 

Which is completely absurd and utterly unfair, on all accounts. 

It is a holy war, or at least he is told. He doesn't think war can ever truly be holy, but no one cares what a soldier doomed to die thinks.

Because of course, the moment he was handed a sword his fate was sealed, and he knew that, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. 

It’s poetic irony, really, that this is how his life is going to end: in the middle of a foreign land, bleeding out under an unfeeling sky that supposedly hosts a god that cannot possibly be the same god both sides believe in, because otherwise these battles would be pointless. He almost laughs at the thought, but quickly discovers that he is not able to laugh anymore, unless he feels like coughing up blood. Which he does not. 

Nathaniel does not remember falling to his hands and knees, but there is trampled grass under his hands, and he thinks perhaps he must have stumbled when that soldier yanked his dagger out of Nathaniel’s side, his knees giving out as that feeble support was robbed from him.

It was his mistake, and a stupid one at that. He had hesitated, caught off guard at the sight of a boy, a child really, lying on the ground and throwing up his hands in front of his face as Nathaniel’s sword swung at him. Nathaniel had frozen, everything in him coming to a terrible, shuddering stop, and the boy had thanked him by lunging up and burying a dagger in Nathaniel’s side, up to the hilt. 

Blinding, all consuming pain lances through Nathaniel's torso, and the worst part is, he can’t even blame the kid. He would have done the exact same thing. 

Some small, distant part of him is panicking, registering the blood that is leaving his body far too quickly and desperately pleading  _ survive, survive, survive,  _ but the rest of him can only register the way everything has quieted and slowed to a blurry crawl, and that part of him is breathing for the first time in years, despite the aching of his lungs. 

_ On your feet, Abram,  _ his mother’s voice says in his head, harsh and demanding.  _ The ground is no place to die.  _

Nathaniel gasps, and it feels like the air is severing him in half. His vision cuts to black and then returns. The scream of metal on metal pierces his delirious quiet. He imagines that it is his voice, for he is certain he could not scream if he tried. 

_ On your feet.  _

It may have taken years, or seconds, or lifetimes, but eventually, Nathaniel drags himself upright once again, the world spinning like a top around him, and he’s not even sure why he does it. There’s nothing more he can do; the war rages on, and he just stands in the midst of it all, his head bowed, eye closed. 

For a moment, a crippling sense of deja vu slams into him, his bones screaming  _ we have been here before, this has happened before,  _ but it doesn't make sense, and by the time Nathaniel tries to latch onto the thought it is slipping away like sand through his fingers. 

He thinks he hears laughter, somewhere in the distance, then it morphs into the thin scream of a hawk, miles above, then it becomes the sweet chirping of a robin. Music slinks through his skull like a thief, taking his balance, taking his very mind, and suddenly, there are two wars, the one raging around him and the one in his head. One that is reality, and one that feels far too close to a memory that he shouldn’t even possess. 

A place that he had most certainly never been to, and a face he has most certainly never known, rear up behind his eyes, so he opens them. 

_ Run, Abram, _ a voice whispers, but it’s no longer his mother’s. Nathaniel sways on his feet. He lifts his hands to where he can see them, and they are stained red with blood. His blood. 

_ Run.  _

He lost his helmet sometime in the initial chaos of the two armies colliding, but he only notices when he finally scraps together the conviction to lift his head, because he definitely doesn’t have the strength, and it’s easier than he prepared for it to be. 

Just as he manages to stand up straight, however, his eyes lock onto something that very nearly sends him to his knees again. 

Nightmares have no right to seem so solid, so real. 

Right in front of Nathaniel stands a figure clothed in shadows; they cling to him as they billow in a nonexistent wind, stretching like fingers and curling like smoke. His hood is drawn up to shroud his face, but it’s almost unnecessary, because the sun doesn’t even begin to touch him. He is his own personal night. 

And of course, gripped in one hand and flashing like lighting, is a scythe. 

The children’s stories got it right, apparently.

Death is a reaper. 

Nathaniel really does laugh that time, ignoring the blood that coats his lips and the pain that lances through every nerve in his body. He brings a hand up to silence himself, digging his bloody fingers into his face like he can claw the smile off, and the reaper says, so softly that Nathaniel almost misses it, “Oh.” 

Nathaniel spits into the grass at his own feet, unsurprised when it’s a deep red. 

“You’re not real,” he says, not because he believes it, but because he can. 

Death doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything.

“Come to collect my soul?” Nathaniel asks. “Or, at least what’s left of it?" 

There is a long stretch of silence, and Nathaniel almost starts to think that he is hallucinating it all, that there is no Grim Reaper in front of him and he’s just seeing things, seconds away from dying, but then Death shifts, and suddenly, he’s closer, though Nathaneil did not see him move.

“Not quite,” Death says, and Nathaniel feels his voice in his bones. 

It’s the kind of voice that disarms without trying, levels armies without raising at all. It is devoid of any emotion, blank as a slate, and makes Nathaniel want to tap at it until it cracks, press it until it breaks. 

He can probably count the minutes he has left to live on one hand, but he has also never claimed to be smart, and he has always, always been an instigator, so he lift his head and stares Death in the eyes as best as he can without actually being able to see them, and says, “Try to take me, I dare you.” 

As if he has anything left to truly live for.

He swears Death raises an eyebrow. At least that's what Nathaniel imagines him doing. If feels like he's raising an eyebrow. “Who ever said I was taking you anywhere?” he asks. 

Nathaniel scoffs. “Do stories mean nothing to you?” 

“Most of the time, yes.” 

Everything is going very, very blurry around the edges. 

Well, blurrier. 

Nathaniel presses a palm to the wound in his side in an attempt to stay upright.

“You are made of stories,” he manages to say, though the pain and the screams of men in agony that seem to fade in and out haphazardly. 

“You know nothing about me,” Death says. 

Nathaniel manages a smile, and he knows it is not nice, but he doesn’t care. “I guess not,” he says, and then between one second and the next, he is on the ground again; everything in him feels like it's collapsing in on itself. If he had the breath, he would scream. 

He thinks he hears Death sigh, and he looks up just in time to see his shadowy silhouette block out the sun. 

“Time’s up,” Death says, his hand coming up to cover Nathaniel’s eyes, and everything dissolves into an all consuming darkness. 

**California, Present**

X

Nathaniel Wesniski lets the tears roll down his face, the stench of salt almost completely overpowered by the suffocating stench of blood.

There is so much blood. 

“Mom,” he says, and he doesn't recognize his own voice. He tries again. 

“Mom, come on.” 

He’s holding her hand in between both of his. It’s getting colder. He holds it tighter. 

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking dare.”

She doesn’t answer, just stares sightlessly ahead. Nathaniel wants to scream, to sob, to shake her until she wakes up again, but his bones have turned to lead, taking most of his voice with them. 

“Mom,” he says, choking, his lungs refusing to take in any air at all. “We were  _ so close.  _ Please don’t leave me here, don't make me do this alone.” The last part comes out strained and panicked, heavy and terrified. 

Nathaniel lets go of her with one hand and moves it to her shoulder, to pull her against him, to will life back into her veins, but as her body shifts the sound the dried blood peeling from the vinyl car seat makes cuts to his core, and it's too much. 

It sounds like velcro. 

Nathaniel doesn't remember moving, but suddenly he is leaning out of the passenger seat door and dry heaving into the sand, feeling like his throat is being clawed open. 

The next thing he really knows is the feeling of his lighter slipping from his fingers, and the sound that the air makes as flames devour the oxygen within one second and the next in a desperate gasp. He retreats as the fire catches, his face wiped dry by the wind off the ocean, a terrifying numbness settling into the gaps and spaces of his soul. 

He sees a different fire, behind his eyes. It’s surrounding him, the ground is crumbling beneath his feet, and someone is calling his name. 

Then it shifts and it’s raining from the sky, crumbling the ceiling that isn’t really there from above in a deadly collapse. 

And Nathaniel. 

Nathaniel is so tired. 

Of all of it. 

He wears grief like a second skin, hides desperation in the fragile cage of his hands.

And he's sick of the weight of simply surviving. He’s sick of it.

Nathaniel waits until the fire completely dies down, watching the sun set and rise again before it does. 

All is quiet that morning, save for the old bray of the wind, of the sea, of time itself. 

_ Run,  _ it whispers, stealing the voices of people long gone, of memories half forgotten.  _ Run, time is leaving you behind.  _

Nathaniel pulls his mother’s still warm bones from the driver’s seat and buries them in the sand. 

He doesn’t let himself linger. 

He didn't want it to come to this, but he is thoroughly out of options. 

Just as the sun reaches its apex in the cruel blue sky, Nathaniel turns his back on the blackened shell of the car and begins to walk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neil staring into the void of darkness that is Andrew’s face:  
> Andrew: no that’s my nose. Look a little higher— no nope too high I’m not that tall
> 
> Lol this-little-lighthouse I think you’re funny. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading, we are one twelfth of the way done! Pls let me know what you thought, I’m always, always curious. :)


	2. Gold as the Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stephen is the son of a man who is always, always angry, and a woman who is dead. He’s not having a great day. 
> 
> More than half a century later, Nathaniel needs a drink. Of water. He’s very dehydrated. He is also not having a great day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No specific TW I don’t think, just death in general. Implied violence. Passing out perhaps.

**The Plague 1347**

II

Stephen walks in the darkness that is rendered incomplete as snow falls in gentle drifts from the starless sky. 

It’s well below freezing, but he can barely feel anything anymore, so he doesn’t really notice. He is still walking, only because he knows that if he stops, he will never move again. 

It’s eerie, how still everything is. 

Just hours ago they brought the carts to wheel away the dead, but it seems like the town has done enough wailing for the night. 

Just hours ago, his mother was taken from their house, reduced to another loss, another body to be burned. 

Just hours ago, in a fit of blind rage, his father hit him so hard that he lost his balance and hit his head on the bottom of the stairs, shoving shards of light into his brain like hot needles. 

It was then that he saw the spots, scattered across the back of his hand. 

The marks of the plague. 

So he takes a walk. 

Or more accurately, he runs. 

There are not very many places to go in that tiny, miserable town; it's smaller than it seems. He walks the length of it too many times to count, feeling like a caged animal.

Sometime in the last few minutes of walking, the snow starts falling in earnest, completely shrouding the buildings that he knows, logically, are there, but he still can't see.

The silence drags on. The snow persists in falling, in blinding him, in burying everything else.

It is slow, and not exactly peaceful, until it isn't. 

Between one frozen moment and the next, his vision cuts and he's running again, across snow and ice as the sun peeks over the horizon, but that can't be right because the sun has just set. 

He blinks and it's gone. 

He blinks and it's getting very hard to breathe. 

He blinks and the world has been reduced to white. The wind is howling and it doubles in his mind to become animalistic, haunting. 

He blinks and something like a hallucination consumes him. 

The breath aches in his lungs and again, he's running, running as far as he can, but his body is not his own, and there is a terrible pain in his side. He is cold and hot all at the same time, and he knows, he knows he is being hunted. He can taste it on the wind. 

They are closing in on him. 

He reaches a clearing, never intending to stop, but then something darts across his path, and he has no choice. He all but collapses with the momentum that sends him skidding through the snow. He doesn’t have to look to know that it is rapidly turning red under him. 

_ Done this before,  _ is all he thinks, and then whatever had caused him to stop running steps out into the light. 

It is shadows personified; night clings to its legs while the dawn finds its way into the creature’s eyes. 

It looks like a fox, almost, but he knows that it’s not. 

He bows his head, perpetually unable to catch his breath, letting his eyes rest on his paws as he hears the shouts behind him. 

_ Wait, paws?  _

He snaps his head up just as at least eight men burst into the clearing, his eyes locking onto the creature’s in front of him. It blinks at him, and then he’s slammed back into his own body with enough force to make him stagger. 

The wind has crescendoed from a howl to a shriek, but Stephen barely notices, barely cares. 

He’s stopped walking. Doesn’t see the point. 

He doesn’t really remember where he is. He’s so tired. 

“You again,” a voice says, but it’s so soft that it might have been the wind. 

Stephen looks up to find a stranger in front of him, mostly shrouded by the snow so that he can see nothing of him except for a vague outline. 

“What are you doing out here?” he thinks he manages to ask, because no one should be out here right now. “It’s not safe.” 

The stranger steps a little closer, but gets no clearer. Stephen sways on his feet. 

“Maybe for you,” the stranger says. 

Stephen manages to shake his head, shoving his hands into his pockets and thinking of the balck spots that are slowly spreading there. 

“I am already dead,” he says. 

The stranger seems to tilt his head. “No, you’re not.” Stephen says nothing. “Not yet,” the stranger amends, and for some reason, it makes Stephen smile. 

“You should go back,” he says, and it feels like there is cotton stuffed in his head, in his ears, filling his mouth. He feels full to the brim and empty all at once. He doesn't really know what he’s saying anymore. “From whatever direction you came. You could still make it out. Or in, I guess.” 

“I am not dying,” the stranger says. 

“Not yet,” Stephen shoots back, echoing him deliberately. 

“I am Death,” the stranger says. 

Stephen blinks. 

The wind howls, and it feels like it’s coming from his own chest. 

Metal meets metal in a violent kiss, somewhere in the back of his mind, somewhere back in time, and it feels like it’s all around him, engulfing him, consuming him. He feels so heavy, like his body is weighed down by unwanted armor, beaten in an unwanted war. 

A face flashes behind his eyes, terror leaking from a voice he has never heard before. 

Firelight licks the edge of his vision, and he has no idea what is going on. 

Lives he doesn’t remember living crowd for space in his soul.

His vision focuses again, finding the stranger still in front of him, the snow still all around him. 

“Death,” he echoes, but his voice doesn’t carry. He thinks perhaps the stranger hears him anyway. “That would make sense,” he murmurs. 

Suddenly, the stranger is much closer than before, filling his vision, and for a moment he thinks he catches a glimpse of flashing golden eyes. Eyes like the dawn. 

“Time's up,” he thinks he hears the stranger, Death, whoever he is, say, and then he feels two fingers pressed to the pulse point on his neck, and everything dissolves. 

**Arizona/New Mexico Border, Present**

X

Nathaniel has been walking for longer than he remembers. 

He can't recall what state he’s in.

The sun seems intent on baking him alive, and his skin feels like it's boiling. Either that or pertifying. He can't focus enough to think about it too hard. 

He left a rest stop sometime early that morning, after hitchhiking all the way across Arizona with a couple different, sympathetic truck drivers, but his luck can only last so long. 

Now, he walks, because stopping is not an option. Not anymore. 

There’s a town in the distance, but it stays stubbornly the same distance away, no matter how many steps he takes towards it, mocking him. 

He knows that if he doesn’t get water soon, he could be in trouble. He’s been able to ignore the pounding of his head for this long, but then shivers fly up his spine, and everything goes terribly cold within a split second, and his heart sinks.

“Not yet,” he whispers, to the mirage in front of him, to the sun above him as it retreats behind a large swath of clouds, to the shadows behind him. He stumbles over his own feet, stubbornly not looking over his shoulder. “Not yet,” he says, louder, his voice stronger.

“That’s not how this works,” a voice replies, too close and too far at the same time, “and you know it.”

Nathaniel grits his teeth, pressing the palm of his right hand to his forehead, like he could will the voice away. 

“Fuck you,” he says, through the cotton in his mouth. The voice says nothing. Nathaniel stumbles again. 

“Neil-”

Nathaniel stops, spinning sharply on his heel and bringing himself face to face with Death, his perpetual shadow, his only constant.  _ Andrew. _

_ “Fuck you,”  _ he says again, the venom in his voice sagging in the middle under the weight of every single other emotion that he never allows himself to feel. He feels brittle enough to crack under the slightest pressure, like dry bones in the desert. He feels like he’s seconds away from crumbling to dust. 

“There is  _ nothing you can do, _ ” Andrew says, emotion staining his voice where he would normally never let it. His hood is still up, completely hiding his face. Nathaniel wants to push it back, to look into his eyes. 

“Don’t say that,” he says. “Don’t say that, I’m not done yet. I’m  _ so close. _ ”

“Neil, this is it,” Andrew says, his voice quiet. “No more screw ups, no more reruns.”

“I know that,” Nathaniel says desperately. “I fucking know. You don’t think I know that?” 

“Time’s up,” Andrew whispers, but Nathaniel is already moving, shaking his head. He lifts his hands slowly, so Andrew can step back if he wants to, but he doesn’t, so Nathaniel allows himself to gently push Andrew’s hood back, careful to keep any parts of their skin from brushing. 

“Andrew,” he says, like one might say the word  _ please,  _ letting his hands hover on either side of Andrew’s head, framing his face, without actually touching him. “Andrew.”

“Neil,” Andrew replies, his hazel golden eyes fathomless. 

“ _ Not yet. _ ”

Something like pain flashes in Andrew’s gaze for a split second, but it’s gone as soon as it appears. 

“I made you a promise,” Nathaniel reminds him. 

“You made me hope,” Andrew replies, accusing. 

Nathaniel wishes for all the world that he could brush a thumb under Andrew’s eyes, tangle a hand in his pale hair, hold onto him and never let go, but he can’t, not yet.

Not yet. 

“Keep hoping,” he whispers.

Rage flits across Andrew’s eyes that time, but it too is wiped away within moments. Nathaniel wants to tell him to hold onto that rage, that fury, to let it burn down the world, let it reduce everything to ashes. He doesn’t. 

“One more time,” he says instead. “One more chance.” 

Andrew is silent for the space of several heartbeats, his face unreadable. 

“One more time,” he agrees, finally, and then the sun reemerges from behind the clouds, and he’s gone. 

++++

Somehow, Nathaniel makes it to the next rest stop, and by pure determination, manages to not pass out. He shoplifts some water like the pathetic human being he is, along with some shitty gas station snacks and finds his way to a bus station, where he bullshits his way on. 

He thinks that perhaps the universe has decided to give him a break, because he makes it all the way across Texas without too much trouble, managing to slip off the bus before he can get caught. From there, he hitchhikes again, though it’s harder than the first time, as he looks more and more like a sketchy murderer as the days drag on. 

It is in the evening of the fourth day after his mother died, that he reaches South Carolina. 

Crossing the state lines feels a lot like nails being pounded into a very permanent coffin, but doesn’t allow himself to dwell on the thought. 

Once again, he has thoroughly run out of options.

After he crosses the state line, it feels like seconds, and he’s passing Palmetto State University, his eyes snagging on the red brick buildings and cheerful lawns through the bus window. It makes him want to throw up. But that could also just be the dehydration. 

It takes him a good ten minutes to uproot his feet from the sidewalk once the bus drops him off. He actually paid for that ride with the bit of money he had been able to pickpocket at the stop before, so there is no reason for him to run. 

There is a little, scarlet bellied robin scavenging at the roots of an oak tree across the street. 

For some reason, the sight captivates him, and only when it flies away does he find it within himself to move. 

Once he starts moving, it doesn’t get easier. 

He has been lightheaded for so long that he can’t remember what being steady feels like, and he’s pretty sure that the soles of his feet are cracked and bleeding, but he doesn’t want to stop and take his shoes off to check. 

There is an ache in his bones that settled in after he left Arizona, and it has not retreated since. 

He’s running on pure desperation.

Well, that, and spite. 

He doesn’t know how, but he manages to back track from the bus stop to the University, and from there, he just has to find the court. 

It’s not hard, the building sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Where all the other buildings are the classic red brick with white columns and marble steps, the Exy court is violently orange and aggressively modern. Like the college board had gotten really excited by all the new Exy rage sweeping the country, and they had banked on having a team to fill their stadium and put their name on the map. 

The Palmetto State Foxes put their name on the map alright, but not exactly in a good way. They were a laughing stock at best, and downright dysfunctional at worst. 

But Nathaniel doesn’t have time to analyse them. He makes his way to the back entrance of the stadium, hoping against all hope that someone would be inside. 

He’s met with a chain link fence in front of the back door, with an access code to keep it closed, but it doesn't even slow him down. He’s up and over it without breaking his stride. 

Unfortunately, he’s a lot weaker than he anticipates, and coming down on the other side is not a soft landing. Pain shoots up his already bruised and battered feet, almost sending him to his knees, but not quite. 

There’s another key pad on the back door, and no windows for him to climb to, so he settles for pounding on the metal door as hard as he can. 

He refuses to yell, just keeps pounding. 

He is seconds away from giving up when the door swings open, and he just has time to process the man on the other side, the obnoxious artificial light spilling out into the heavy dusk and very nearly blinding him. 

The man is a lot taller than Nathaniel, with a scowl etched deep into his face; tribal flame tattoos snake up his arms in dizzying whirls, and everything about his screams  _ don’t touch me. _

He looks vaguely familiar. 

“Can I help you?” he asks, after a moment, his voice wary, and that too, is slightly familiar, but he doesn't have time to dwell on it. Nathaniel doesn't blame him for being wary. He must look like a wraith. 

“Kevin,” he manages to say, even though everything inside him is screaming at him to turn and run. He still feels like he’s about to throw up.

“Excuse me?” the man asks. 

Just then, the world tilts alarmingly, but Nathaniel has nothing to reach out and grab onto, nothing to keep him up. The feeling is as familiar as breathing at this point.

“Kevin,” he says again, gasps really. “I need to see Kevin Day.”

“What-” the man starts, but then Nathaniel’s vision cuts in and out, and he really sways that time. “Kid,” the man says, his voice sharp but fading. “Hey, stay with me.”

_ Easier said than done,  _ Nathaniel thinks wryly, and then promptly loses consciousness. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little heads up, I will probably be adding little historical facts in the end notes bc I did an outrageous amount of research whilst procrastinating actually writing this fic, and now you are gonna get my potentially inaccurate and summed up version bc history is mcfrickin cool my friends. It really is. 
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you thought, I am perpetually curious. :)


	3. Careful What You Wish For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex despises roses, bc he can, and Neil wakes up with major headache.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for poisoning and mild panic attacks.

**The War of the Roses 1465**

III

Alexander of Lancaster hates roses. He hates them so fucking much. 

Which is truly unfortunate, because they're everywhere. 

Their scent coats the air, haunts his breath. He sees them in the garden and in the windows, on the tables and lining the walls, and all of them are deeply, violently red. Of course they are. 

That is, until he wakes up one morning and exits his rooms, only to find hundreds upon hundreds of blindingly white roses in his way. 

It makes him want to scream. 

"Alexander!" his mother calls, and he turns to find her walking towards him like there are monsters on her heels. She doesn't run. She would never run. Not unless no one else would see, but she makes it to him as fast as possible, trampling through the white roses and taking his face in her hands. “Are you alright?”

Alex frowns at her. “Why would I not be alright?” he asks, and she runs her hands from his face to his shoulders, holding him firmly in place. 

“Men from the House of York were found in the gardens last night,” she says. “I feared the worst.” 

Alex looks around, eyeing the white blossoms that spill across the entire hall in front of the door to his rooms. 

“This is the worst,” he says, disdainfully. He thinks he might pass out from the stench, but his father would throw a fit. As it is, his mother gives him a little shake, pulling his eyes back to her own. 

“You could have been killed,” she hisses, and it dawns on him that she was actually worried. “They could have murdered you in your sleep.” 

He scoffs, trying to make her smile. “Not very honorable.”

“Abram,” his mother says, and then he knows something is truly wrong. She never calls him Abram. At least, not where his father can hear. As he has gotten older the name has been less and less frequent. 

“But they didn’t Mother, they didn’t touch me,” he says, removing her hands from his shoulders so that he can properly hold them. “I’m perfectly fine.” 

Her eyes pinch, and Alex wants to smooth the line between her eyebrows with his thumb. 

“Your father is furious,” she whispers. 

He glances at the roses again, taking a deep breath. “I know.” 

“He thirsts for blood.”

Alex winces, the ghost of pain running it’s fingers over the many, many scars across his stomach and chest and shoulders. “I know.” 

His mother reaches up to tuck a stray strand of his hair behind his ear. It is a deep red. Red like the roses that adorn their family crest. Red like rubies, red like fresh blood. Red like his father's. He knows that she does not like it. 

“He asks for you,” she says, softly. 

Alex takes another deep breath. “Very well,” he replies. 

His mother’s answering smile is so profoundly sad, that he pulls away from her before he can return it. He does not deserve such softness. 

On his way down one of the many corridors of their mostly empty manor, he runs into Matthew, one of his fathers guards and the closest thing he has to an ally in the entire estate, besides his mother.

“Sir,” Matthew greets him, inclining his head switching directions to fall into step with Alex.

“You know how I feel about you calling me that,” Alex says, and Matthew’s eyes dart around them before falling back to Alex’s. 

“With all due respect,” he says, a forced smile pasted to his face, “now is not the time to deceive ourselves into thinking we have the luxury of pretending we are invisible.” 

Alex slows, but doesn’t stop. “What do you mean by that?” he asks, lowering his voice. Matthew looks wary, on edge. 

“Are you familiar with the house of Tudor?” he asks. 

Alex scowls at him. “Of course I am,” he says. “Do you forget who you are speaking to?” 

Matthew raises a placating hand. “Forgive me, I mean not to insult you. Just, listen.” Matthew looks around one last time before grabbing Alex’s arm and hauling him into a side corridor, pulling them behind a huge vase of crimson roses. Alex begins to protest but Matthew cuts him off. “Listen, your father has invited Lady Margaret of the House of Tudor and her son to dine with you tonight.” 

“And?” Alex asks. Matthew gestures somewhat wildly. 

“And she has a distant claim to the throne, through the Lancaster line.”

Oh. 

“Oh,” Alex says. Matthew nods. “Maybe they want allies?” Alex says, but even he doesn’t believe himself. 

“Maybe,” Matthew says, because he’s too kind, too hopeful. 

“How old is her son?” Alex asks. 

“Young, I think,” Matthew replies. He checks the corridor again and finally lets go of Alex, leading the way back to the original hall. “But since when has that stopped anyone?”

“Never,” Alex says, and they fall into silence. 

Alex again, wants to scream. 

He wishes, not for the first time, that it was possible to run away, to escape all of this. This civil war over who gets the throne. 

When he was young his mother used to tell him stories, spin tales of all the places they would go in the world, if only they had the time. If only they had the freedom. 

He almost hates her for it. For planting ideas in his head and letting them grow, only for her to stand by and watch as his father uproots them, one by one, day by day. 

But then Matthew stops with him as he pauses in front of the door that leads to his fathers study, and he sees the roses carved there, and he remembers that he has someone so much easier to hate. 

“Godspeed,” Matthew murmurs beside him, and he pushes open the door.

The first thing that hits him as he steps into the room is the overwhelming smell of roses. Somehow, this room always smells stronger than any other, probably to mask the scent of blood. Alex shivers. 

“Alexander,” his father says, looking up from his desk, and Alex wants to disappear. He inclines his head and stops a good distance away. His father’s face is a blank mask, which is never a good sign. “You heard, I trust?” 

Alex assumes he’s talking about the York breach in their house and nods again. 

“Use your words,” his father says mildly, and Alex represses a flinch. 

“Yes, Father,” he says. 

“Good,” his father says, rising from his desk and walking around it to reach Alex, who fights to keep from backing away. “They will die for what they’ve done,” he says, like a promise. 

“Of course,” Alex says, like those men deserve to die for simply flooding the house with white flowers. His father looks satisfied, reaching out to clap a hand on Alex’s shoulder, and that time, he really does flinch. 

His father doesn’t notice, and if he does, he ignores it. 

“I’ve invited some guests to dine with us tonight,” he says, and Alex lets his eyebrows raise in fake surprise. “They are of the House of Tudor.” 

“Potential allies?” Alex asks, and his father nods. 

“Perhaps,” he says. “Perhaps not.” He lets go of Alex’s shoulder. “But it is better to have them here, rather than let them conspire with the Yorks.” 

Alex says nothing. He knows his father is preparing to say what he really wants to. 

They stand in silence for a few moments, during which Alex wishes desperately for the sweet release of death. 

Finally, his father speaks up, and it’s just as bad as Alex thinks it’s going to be. 

“I need you to kill him,” his father says, and Alex doesn’t really need to ask who. He knows.

“The boy?” he asks anyway, dread curling in his gut. 

“Indeed,” his father says, his eyes boring into Alex’s own. “Can you do that for me?” 

Alex swallows. 

He can. Of course he can. One cannot not grow up the way he did and not know how to kill. 

He just doesn’t want to. 

“This is war, boy,” his father reminds him. As if he could forget. His father’s hand comes back up to grip his shoulder, and it’s too tight. His thumb digs into the exact spot of one of Alex’s many scars given to him by his father and his father’s men. 

“I can do it,” Alex says finally, and his father lets go. 

“See that you do,” he says. “Now, go prepare. They should arrive by nightfall.” 

Alex nods mutely, then turns and leaves as fast as he possibly can without running.

Darkness approaches faster than he wants it to. Matthew had waited for him outside his fathers study and offered to train with him, as they often do, but Alex had brushed him off, needing to be alone. 

Now, the entire day has slipped between his fingers, and he has done next to nothing, fear and dread rendering him useless. 

It’s not like his father hasn’t asked him to do this before, because he has. It just takes something from Alex, everytime. Something that he’s not sure he can afford to lose anymore of. 

Matthew finds him wandering the halls of the manor as the last rays of daylight slip below the horizon. 

“Alex,” he says in greeting, smiling like Alex is someone worth smiling at. 

Alex finds himself smiling back, because Matthew called him by name and not by title, like he is constantly asking him to. 

“Matt,” he returns, and Matthew’s smile only grows. It fades after a moment, however. 

“I think they are here,” he says seriously. “The Tudors.” 

Alex only nods, glancing outside at the darkened sky. 

“For what it’s worth,” Matthew says, “I think you would make a great king.”

Alex stares at him. “No one is trying to make me king,” he says, but Matthew just shrugs. 

“I know,” he says. “I just think that, out of all the people who are killing and dying for the throne, you are the only one who would deserve it.” 

Alex stares at him some more, but he doesn’t take it back. “I do not want to be king,” he says. 

Matthew just smiles sadly. “Exactly,” he says, turning away, to return to his post probably, but Alex catches his arm to stop him. 

“Wait, Matt,” he says, and Matthew waits. “Why…” he trails off, letting go of Matthew's arm so he can twist his hands in his sleeves. “Why are you so kind to me?” he asks. “You know who I am. You know what I do.”

Matthew smiles at him again, and it’s less sad that time, more fond. “Because you're my friend,” he says easily, like it’s obvious. Alex blinks, shocked. “And I do know who you are,” Matthew continues. “You are so much more than your father is trying to make you to be.” 

He leaves Alex standing there, dumbfounded, giving him one last smile before walking away, and Alex doesn’t know what to do with it. 

He would have just kept standing there, processing Matthew’s words for the next few centuries, if his mother had not appeared and snapped him out of it. 

“Abram,” she says, quietly, linking his arm through hers and starting to lead him down to the main hall. “You must be brave. Can you do that for me?” 

Alex manages to nod, letting her pull him after her. 

“You must do what your father says,” she continues. “He will be kinder if you do.” 

“Yes, Mother,” Alex says, barely hearing her, and then they are stepping into the main hall, and Alex forces himself to focus. 

His father is in the center of the hall, greeting his guests with a charming smile and warm words. Alex looks past him and studies the people who they are welcoming into their home. If it can even be called that. 

At the front of the group is an elegant woman who looks like she is convinced that she is already the Queen of England. She holds herself like the finery she is draped in weighs nothing, which is a feat in itself, all things considered. 

Next to her stands a boy, and Alex's stomach bottoms out. 

He's so young. 

He's so, so young. 

He looks like he's just barely over sixteen. 

"Alexander," his father says pleasantly, holding out a hand and beckoning to him. Once Alex reaches his side he takes him by the shoulders and turns back to their guests. "Lady Margaret, may I present to you, my son, Alexander." 

Lady Margaret tips her head at him, ever so slightly. "It is a pleasure to meet you, young Mr. Lancaster." 

"The pleasure is mine," Alex replies, feeling like he might fall over. Or throw up. Or both.

“This is my son, Henry,” Lady Margaret says, and Alex inclines his head at him, making himself look the boy in the eyes. They are defiant, those eyes, arrogant. He wears pride like an invisible crown on his head. 

Alex’s father says something that he misses, and then suddenly everyone is moving, and his father is letting go of him. Without his grip, Alex staggars ever so slightly, letting the Lady and the rest of her entourage pass him before moving to follow, but he doesn’t make it far before someone is grabbing hold of his arm and pulling him back. 

“Neil, oh my god,” his assailant says, and he is suddenly face to face with a boy he has never met in his life. “Oh my god, you’re here.” 

Alex yanks him arm out of the other boy’s grip, taking several steps back. The boy doesn’t even notice. His eyebrows are pinched together, green eyes flashing as they war between panicked concern and what could possibly be excitement, and he just follows Alex as he attempts to put space between them. 

“Neil,” the boy says. “Neil, it’s me.”

Alex holds his hands up toward the boy off, shaking his head. “My name is Alex,” he says, and the boy freezes. “Alexander of the House of Lancaster.”

There is a moment of absolute silence, and then the other boy is pressing a hand to his own mouth. “You don’t remember,” he says, and his words are muffled in his palm. 

Alex stares at him, confusion tearing holes in his lungs. “Remember what?” 

“Oh god,” the boy says. 

“I have no idea who you are,” Alex says. “And no idea who you think I am, but you are mistaken.”

“No,” the boy says, taking several, blessed steps away from him. “Oh god, no. This can’t be happening.” 

For the first time, Alex notices the crest of a raven on the boy’s uniform. He must be part of the Tudor guard, because he isn’t dressed in finery like the nobles, but Alex thought their crest was a rose, like the Lancaster crest. 

Alex doesn’t have time for this. 

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Alex says. “But I must go join my family and my guests. If you’ll excuse me.” 

With that, he walks away, leaving the boy standing in the foyer and making his way to the dining hall.

He doesn’t allow himself to think about it, to process. 

He has a job to do. 

No one is seated yet when he enters the dining room, but his father does give him a piercing glare upon his arrival. Soon after, his father calls for everyone to sit, and the first course to be served. 

Alex barely tastes any of it. 

He has time; the Tudors will be staying with them for at least a fortnight, but that does nothing to sooth his nerves. 

Just to add to it, the boy’s eyes flash in his mind, vividly green and a little wild, and he knows that he has never met him in his life, yet his eyes look so familiar. 

Then, his father says his name, and he forces both things from his mind, focusing on the present like it can save him from the future and engaging with their guests like he knows his father wants him to. 

Dinner passes in a blur of fake smiles and repressed anxiety. He has to twist his hands into the fabric of his shirt too many times to count to hide the trembling. He avoids his father’s eyes all night, unsure if he can handle the fear right then.

Sometime during the feast, the boy from the hall enters and sits at the far end of the table, and Alex avoids his eyes too. 

It isn’t until after dinner, when drinks are being served, that the boy corners him again. 

“I told you,” Alex says, before he can say anything. “I don’t know you.” 

Something like hurt flashes across the boy's face, but it is gone just as quickly. “I know,” he says, “That’s why I have to talk to you.”

“Well, I actually have no desire to talk to you, so-”

“ _ Abram _ ,” the boy interrupted, and Alex freezes. 

“What did you just say?” he whispers, ice flooding his veins. 

“Abram,” the boy says again, and Alex feels like someone has shoved a knife between his ribs. “Listen to me.”

“How do you know that name?” Alex asks, but the boy ignores him. 

“They know now,” he says, keeping his voice very low, green eyes darting around the room. 

“Know  _ what?”  _ Alex demands. “Who are you talking about? What is going on?”

“Neil.”

“That’s not my name.”

“Abram.”

“You have no right to use that name.”

“I’m sorry,” the boy says, and the worst part is, he looks like he actually means it. “I’m sorry that I didn’t find you sooner, and I’m sorry that I found you now.” 

“Your apologies mean nothing to me,” Alex hisses. A goblet is set down on the table in front of him, and he picks it up, a little desperate for the wine inside. 

As soon as his hand closes around it, the world warps and saturates, becoming richer, darker, fuller. His fathers house is suddenly replaced with a room drenched in heady firelight that looks like it stretches up and up, on and on, forever. He catches glimpses of the night sky through the ceiling, and the stars look so terribly far away, but there are millions of them. 

He has a cup in his hand, and it’s made of pure gold. His eyes travel down the table, that he is the head of, finding people dripping in jewels and fine metals; they look unreal with charcoal lining their eyes and red staining their lips. There is laughter, but it is muffled, and music, but it is distant. 

“Pharaoh?” a voice says to his left, and he turns to find a woman looking at him with concern in her kind eyes. She has a diadem around her head, and he’s pretty sure that the ends of her unnaturally pale hair are dipped in actual gold. Her brows furrowed together, and she reaches a hand out, stopping before she touches him. “Radames?”

The cup slips from his fingers. 

Snow engulfs his vision. 

Something howls beneath his skin. 

Metal shrieks as it meets metal, again and again and again. 

Over and over again. 

A face rears up behind his eyes, and they’re saying something, urgently, but he can’t understand them, he doesn't even know who they are and-

Alex blinks, and it’s gone. He’s in his father’s house, pressing a goblet to his lips and tipping it back, enjoying the way the wine burns on the way down, just a little bit. 

“I’m sorry,” the boy in front of his whispers, again.

“For what?” Alex asks, not very kindly.

“Everything,” the boy says. 

“I don’t know you,” Alex reminds him, for what feels like the thousandth time. 

“Not anymore,” the boy replies. “Not yet.” 

“What-” Alex starts, but then the candle beside them sputters and snuffs out, and the boy goes so terribly still. 

“Time’s up, it would seem,” he murmurs, mostly to himself, and then dizziness slams into Alex without warning, his cup slips from his fingers, and his mind is screaming  _ again, again, here we go again.  _

He braces himself on the table's edge, agony blooming in his stomach like roses, vibrant red roses, and he cannot breathe, but he manages to find the strength to look up at the boy. 

“What did you do?” he chokes, but the boy isn’t looking at him, he’s looking past him, a grim fear in his eyes. 

He might have replied, but Alex cannot tell, because a voice speaks behind him and it drowns out everything else. 

“Making friends, are we?” the voice asks, and what was left of Alex’s stomach bottoms out. 

He attempts to straighten, to turn around and face the voice, but finds that he is quite unable. 

“I can’t say I’m surprised.” 

Alex looks at the boy again and finds him looking back, his eyes dark. 

“He’s here, isn't he?” the boy asks, and Alex staggars, gipping the table tighter to keep from sinking to the floor. 

“He is,” the voice replies, and then a figure materializes beside Alex and everything inside of him freezes. He thinks he hears his father say his name, but he can’t focus on anything else. 

The figure is draped in shadows, darkness obscuring every feature. He has a scythe held loosely to his side, and Alex think’s that this cannot possibly be real. 

“What the fuck is happening?” he whispers, and he swears the figure laughs. 

“History,” he replies. 

Pain washes his vision white for one moment, two, then the boy says, “Abram,” and Alex looks at him again, away from the dark figure. 

“I’ll find you,” the boy says, like a promise, but everything is alarmingly blurry. Alex can’t breathe. “I’ll find you again.” 

“Abram!” 

His mother’s voice anguished and full of panic.

“Alexander!” 

His father’s voice, hard as iron. 

Alex looks at the dark figure again, finding a pale hand stretched out to him. A very human looking hand. 

For some reason, he takes it. 

“Be careful what you wish for,” is the last thing he hears. 

**South Carolina, Present**

X

Nathaniel wakes up in an unfamiliar room, and he swears his heartbeat abandons his veins all together, tripping somewhere around his throat, where it most definitely does not belong. 

He swallows it, the waxy sort of paper only found in doctor's offices crinkling sadly under his finger tips, trying and failing three times over to pull enough oxygen into his lungs. He succeeds only when he drags himself into a sitting position, narrowly avoiding tumbling straight off the bed. 

In his panicked flailing, he knocks something off the nearby counter, and it falls to the floor in a tremendous crash. 

The door flies open in seconds, and it takes every ounce of self control that Nathaniel possesses not to bolt. 

"Neil?" someone says, from out of sight, and Nathaniel's breath catches in his throat. 

"Stay where you are," the woman in the doorway snaps at whoever is just outside, then she's turning back to him, concern in her eyes that does absolutely nothing to comfort him. Nathaniel doesn’t even have time to think before the door is falling shut behind her, and she reaches the bed. “I need you to lie back down,” she says, putting both hands on his shoulders to gently push him back, but the contact only makes him flinch, and the sight of the closed door makes his throat close up.

He needs to get out. 

“You are severely dehydrated,” the woman is saying. “We should have taken you to the hospital, because I don’t have an IV, but Kevin wouldn’t let me-”

“Kevin," Nathaniel interrupts, latching onto that name like a lifeline. "Where is he?"

“He’s right outside the door,” she reassures him calmly. It’s not reassuring. Not in the slightest. “Now, I need you to drink some water-”

Nathaniel doesn’t let her finish. Her back is turned, filling a small cup of water from the tiny sink set into the counter, so he takes the opportunity and launches himself out of the cot and towards the door, completely ignoring the dizziness that slams into him with the force of a truck. It takes everything in him to haul open the door, but once he does, he runs straight into someone's chest, and they grab him out of reflex more than anything. 

He lashes out, blindly, but the person doesn’t let go. Something a little feral cracks open and spills over inside his chest. He needs to get out. He needs to not be here. What the fuck was he thinking?

“Neil,” the person holding onto him says, their voice urgent. “Neil, stop.” 

Nathaniel wrenches himself from their grip, his back hitting a wall behind him, and his knees completely giving out. He crumples in on himself, his hands coming up to grip the back of his neck in a pathetic attempt at grounding himself. 

“Don’t touch me,” he says, and he sounds so strangled, even to his own ears. Darkness is creeping at the edge of his vision again. 

“Neil.”

“Not my name.”

“Yes, it is.” 

Nathaniel screws his eyes shut, his grip on the back of his neck bruising. 

“What did you do?” a different voice says. The man with the tattoos, Nathaniel’s mind supplies. 

“Nothing,” the first voice protests. Kevin. Kevin protests. 

Nathaniel stops breathing, and forces himself to look up. 

It is Kevin. The tattoo man is behind him, as is the woman, a cup of water still in her hands. They’re all several steps away, and Nathaniel’s eyes skip to Kevin's arm holding the other two back. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. 

“Neil,” Kevin says again. 

Nathaniel flinches. “Not my name,” he says, again. That’s what Andrew calls him. It’s not really his name though. Not anymore. Not yet. He hasn’t been allowed to have it for centuries. 

“What do you want me to call you?” Kevin asks, but he sounds frustrated, like he already knows the answer. 

Nathaniel stops. Thinks about it. 

“Neil,” he says, quietly. Oh god, he wants to be Neil again. 

“Good,” Kevin snaps, and the woman puts a placating hand on his shoulder, which he shrugs off. “You’re Neil.” He looks like he wants to come closer, but then it’s the tattoo man’s turn to hold him back. “What the fuck are you doing here?” 

“Kevin,” the woman scolds. 

“What were you thinking?” Kevin hisses, ignoring her, his voice livid. 

For some reason, that shoots some life back into Nathaniel. Neil. “I wouldn’t come here if I had anywhere else to go,” he snaps. 

His mind goes to the burning shell of that car, and the gut wrenching stench of salt and fear. 

“You shouldn’t have come here at all,” Kevin says, and panic is leaking into the rage in his voice, making it strained and ugly. 

“Kevin,” the man behind him says sharply, but Kevin ignores him too. 

Neil takes a deep breath, willing his soul into submission. 

“This is it,” he says, before Kevin can say anything else, needing him to understand. “This is all I have.” 

It’s like the meaning of his words slap Kevin across the face. He has the audacity to look surprised. 

“What?” Kevin asks, but it comes out much quieter than before. 

“This is fucking it, Kevin,” Neil spits, slipping into French because there are two people in the room that he doesn’t know, and he needs Kevin to listen to him. Really listen to him. “This is my last chance. No more screw ups, not more reruns.” Now everyone looks shocked. Kevin looks like he’s going to be sick. 

“Are you sure?” he asks, also in French, and Neil sees red. 

“Yes, I’m fucking sure!” he practically yells. “It’s my life! And don’t you dare act like you had no idea, because it’s mostly your fault.” 

Kevin makes a strangled sound, like Neil just shoved a knife between his ribs. It wouldn’t be undeserved. 

“ _ What are you doing here? _ ” Kevin asks, yet again, a broken record. 

Neil shoves himself to his feet, using the wall to haul himself up. “I need your help.”

“Neil,” Kevin says. “You know what my orders are.” 

“I don’t care,” Neil snaps. “You owe me. For once in your life don’t be a coward and  _ help me.”  _

Anguish paints Kevin’s face. “There’s nothing you can do,” he says. “There’s nothing  _ we  _ can do.”

“I have it all, Kevin,” Neil says, pushing off the wall and walking forward, using the back of the couch to keep himself up. The scar around his thumb twinges. As does the one around his neck. And his wrist. And his upper arm. And basically everywhere. “All but one. I just need your piece, and I can end it. It’ll all be over.” 

It’s like Kevin crumples in on himself, holding up his left hand, a profound pain in his eyes. His hand is twisted and roped with scars, like someone tried to completely put it back together after it had been broken past recognition. “I don’t have it,” he says, his voice breaking. “It's already over.” 

Neil stares at him. 

Something acidic froths at the base of his spine, threatening to devour him whole. He feels as if there is a swarm of moths flooding his lungs, his throat, his mouth, and he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe. 

“It’s over, Neil.” 

Neil stumbles over nothing. 

“Ok, that’s it,” the woman says suddenly, grabbing Kevin and hauling out of the way. “Get out.”

Kevin starts to protest, but she cuts him off. 

“Unless he wants you here, you're leaving,” she says, looking at Neil. Neil says nothing, he doesn’t think he could if he tried. She turns back to Kevin. “Get out.” 

“Abby-” 

“Now, Kevin.” 

Kevin hesitates, but after she continues to glare at him, does as he’s told. 

Neil feels nothing. 

The slam of the door as Kevin leaves is the last thing he hears. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty folks here begins my fun history facts that no one asked for, but I’m going to give to you anyways. 
> 
> The War of the Roses was a real thing, and according to good old Wikipedia, they were a series of fifteenth-century English civil wars for control of the throne of England, fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster, represented by a red rose, and the House of York, represented by a white rose. It was very bloody and lasted from about 1455 to 1485. 
> 
> Now our little Henry, the boy Alex is supposed to murder, is, in fact, Henry Tudor, the man who eventually kills King Richard III in battle in 1485, and lays claim to the English throne. Hence, the Tudor line that is still in power today. Isn’t that nifty. 
> 
> Also, Shakespeare wrote about these wars in his plays Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, and Richard II. So that’s fun. 
> 
> Anyways, it’s just kinda funny to me because people would actually go around and passive aggressively give people either red or white roses, as thinly veiled insults. That’s literally fantastic. I want to do that. 
> 
> So yeah. There you go. Do with this information what you will. If you see any gaping, crazy, insulting mistakes pls feel free to come yell at me on tumblr I have the same username, and as always, let me know what you thought, I’m always curious. :)


	4. How to Die Quietly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julian has never set a foot outside of his house, but he dreams of running away, of something like freedom.   
> Neil remembers so much, even if the others don’t remember him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so this is one of the longer chapters, just so you know. Hope you like it. :)
> 
> TW for descriptions of violence and panic attacks.

**Contantinople 1570**

IV

Julian is so tired of hiding. 

He cannot remember the last time he was allowed to leave the house. 

His mother says it’s for his own good. His father says it’s to keep a target off their backs. Julian knows that it’s because they are not wanted there. 

Growing up in a country that got invaded and taken over by one’s enemies before one was even born does not have very many benefits, shockingly enough. 

Growing up as the son of one of the most powerful men on the losing side is decidedly worse. 

Hence, the hiding. 

His one hope is Italy. 

It’s all his uncle can speak of. 

_ It is the only way,  _ his uncle says, at least twice at every meal.  _ We will be safe in Italy. They will welcome us.  _

_ You don’t know that,  _ his mother replies, every time. 

His father doesn’t usually answer, as he is almost never present. 

Julian doesn't really mind it that way. He has found that most things are far more enjoyable, and astronomically less dangerous, when his father is not around to draw blood.

So, his uncle talks about Italy, and the Renaissance that is sweeping Europe, and Julian cannot help but listen, because it is either that, or do nothing at all. And Julian cannot stand doing nothing. 

Sometimes, he thinks that if he does enough nothing, he will become nothing. He will just cease to  _ be  _ at all. And then, of course, there is a tiny, dark part of him that whispers  _ you already are nothing.  _

He has gotten very, very good at ignoring that voice.

There are other things that block it out, occasionally. 

Sometime, when Julian was about ten or twelve, he found a crack in one of the guest room walls that stretched clear through the wall and out to a room that was not a part of their house. He had agonized over it for days, wondering where it went and what was on the other side, coming up with far too many outrageous escape plans that somehow involved that little crack in the wall and ended with their eventual safe arrival in Italy. 

That was until he realized that there was someone else on the other side. Someone living on the other side. 

It started when he began to leave things in the crack, just trinkets really, anything that he thought would be mildly interesting at a later date, but then, anything he put there would disappear. 

It infuriated him at first, prompting a very angry letter, written on some of his father’s paper that he snuck from his study, to whatever spirits were toying with his things. 

The response he got was just as aggressive, if not more, telling him that the thief would not, in fact, stop stealing his things because their sole purpose was to make him angry and it had worked. 

It was shocking, but mostly because he hadn’t really expected a response at all. 

So naturally, he wrote back, and then they wrote back, and so on and so forth, until he learned that their name was actually Allison, and she was just as trapped as he was. 

If Italy is his only hope, Allison is his only joy. 

She's funny and so blatantly honest that it makes him want to scream, because there is not a truly honest bone in his entire body. His mother made sure of that. 

But Allison is delightfully cruel and so dazzlingly real, even on paper, that Julian finds himself attached to her almost immediately. Which is alarming. 

Allison as a whole is alarming, but the fact that, when Julian thinks about it, really thinks about it, which he only really allows himself to do in the dark hours of the morning, he knows without a doubt that he is way too attached. 

This is exactly what his mother told him not to do. 

He can't really find it within himself to care. 

When Allison writes him things like  _ in another life we still would have found each other and taken over the world,  _ and he responds with,  _ in no version of reality would you need me to take over the world,  _ his mothers words completely leave his mind. 

Allison responds to that with a simple,  _ true, but I still want you to help me take over the world,  _ and Julian doesn't care about much of anything except for the fact that there is a warmth inside his ribcage that he has no idea what to do with, so he leaves it, and it just continues to grow. 

It makes him feel a little lost, but then again, he doesn't think there has ever been a time in his life when he was  _ not  _ lost, so again, he doesn't mind. 

It's only when everything goes fantastically, irreversibly wrong that he deeply, deeply regrets it. 

You see, the one thing his father has always been right about, is the target on their backs. 

“Julian!” his uncle calls, stopping him on his way to his room, to go check the crack in the wall for notes from Allison. “Julian, come here.”

Julian doubles his pace at the slight impatience in his uncle’s voice, rounding the corner with one hand on the wall for leverage, and finds himself face to face with a woman and girl that he has never met before. Which is not saying much, as he has not really met anyone outside of his family and the guards his father employs. But still. 

The woman is talking to his mother in a hushed tone, but the girl is perfectly silent, taking the whole room in with a critical eye. The moment she spots Julian, however, her eyes light up and a mischievous smirk pulls at her lips. Julian is immediately wary. 

“Julian,” his uncle says when he, too, spots Julian entering the room, and his mother goes quiet. “Finally.” 

His mother holds out a hand to him, which he hurries to cross the room and take, his eyes bouncing between the two strangers. 

“Julian, darling,” his mother says, and he has to fight to keep from staring at her. She never calls him that. Either of those names. It’s always Abram with her. “I would like you to meet Valentina Reynolds, and her daughter, Allison.” 

That is all it takes for his eyes to snap to the girl’s. Allison’s. That’s Allison. 

His look only makes Allison smile wider, and she dips into a curtsey, saying, “Such a pleasure to meet you.” 

Julian is speechless. 

“Hush, Allison,” Valentina says.

Julian’s mother’s hand comes up to rest on his shoulder, squeezing just a little too hard. “They will be staying with us for a while,” she says, and Julian’s eyes snap to her. 

“What?” he asks, before he can stop himself. 

“There have been some complications,” his mother says, not meeting his eyes. “Marcus Reynolds has been arrested, and they needed a place to stay.”

Julian glances at the two women, but neither of them so much as twitch at the mention of what he assumes is Allison’s father.

He's reeling. 

“Julian,” his mother says abruptly, “Will you show Allison to the guest room across the hall from yours?” 

Julian blinks, and then nods, unable to do anything else, and then he’s turning on his heel and walking out of the room, hoping that Allison will get the hint and follow. She does. 

“Julian,” she says, once they are well out of earshot of the adults. “It’s me.”

He stops, turning to face her. 

“I know,” he says. Allison smiles at him, completely undeterred. 

“Don’t look so excited about it,” she says, and Julian turns back around and keeps walking. 

“I’m not,” he says. 

“Not excited?”

Julian stops again, and she almost runs into him as he turns around. “No,” he says, and she raises an eyebrow. “I mean yes.” Allison is smirking at him. She’s taller than he is. He tries not to be put out by the fact. “I mean no.” 

“Either you are excited, or you're not,” Allison says. “It’s not that hard.” 

At that, Julian smiles, shoving Allison away and turning back around again. “Oh, shut up,” he says, and her laughter follows him around the corner before she manages to catch up. 

“So which one is it?” she asks, falling into step with him. 

“I’m not, Allison,” he tells her, even though he’s smiling like an idiot, and he knows she doesn’t believe him for a second. “What are you doing here?”

“Were you not listening?”

“Not really.”

“Of course not, what am I saying?” Julian leads them into the room across the hall from his and closes the door gently behind them. Allison sprawls across the bed immediately, like she owns the place. “My father is in jail,” she says. 

Julian looks at her, trying to reconcile the non-image he had of her in his head, based on her letters, with the person right in front of him. It’s not hard, seeing as he didn’t really put too much thought into what she looked like before. 

“Are you upset about it?” he asks, even though he can probably guess the answer. 

She doesn’t even hesitate. “No.” She stares at the canopy of the bed as she says it, a little frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. “They can kill him in there, for all I care.” 

Julian should probably be shocked. He should probably tell her that surely her father does not deserve to die, or that she should love him anyway, because he’s her father, but he doesn't.

He thinks, just then, almost out of nowhere, that even if he met all the people in the world, she would be one of the few that understands him the most. 

He knows far too well what it is to hate one's own family, fear one's own blood. 

He’s not going to tell her to love her father anyways, because neither of them would believe the words. They have no use for empty sentiments, when their lives are already filled with empty houses and empty halls, empty hopes and empty wishes. 

“You’re a lot prettier than I imagined you’d be,” Allison says into the silence, and Julian jumps, his eyes snapping to hers. She has that mischievous grin back in place, and her eyes are dancing with it. 

“Um,” Julian says, quiet eloquently. Allison cackles. 

“What’s that face for?” she asks, pushing herself up into a seated position on the bed, looking far too delighted with herself. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you you’re pretty before?”

Julian sputters. He has most certainly  _ not  _ been told he’s pretty before. He has been told that he is too quiet, then too loud, that he is in the way, and never where he is supposed to be. He has been told that he looks unsteady and must stand taller, before his father can catch him slouching, but he has never been called pretty. 

“Come here, you idiot,” Allison says, beckoning him onto the bed. “I don’t bite.” He takes a few tentative steps forward, and Allison smiles, not too encouragingly. “Unless, of course, you want me to,” she adds, just as Julian settles himself on the opposite ends of the bed. 

“No biting,” he says, before he really thinks about it, and Allison laughs again. 

“Alright, pretty boy,” she says fondly, reaching over to ruffle his hair. “Whatever you say.”

And just like that, it's easy. 

It’s like they have known each other all of their lives, and not from passing notes through walls. 

Allison asks to play with his hair, and he lets her, marveling at the feeling of someone’s hands in his hair without the intent to hurt him. She starts talking, and he finds himself talking back, laughing, engaging, and it’s so  _ easy  _ that it almost doesn’t seem real. 

No one comes to check on them. 

No one calls them to a dinner that won’t be happening. 

Neither of them care. 

They stay up well into the night, making up increasingly ridiculous secrets to tell each other, about things that could never happen to them, but they want to imagine anyway. Sometime when there are only a few candles still burning, they transition to telling each other stories, made up or otherwise. 

Julian tells her about a rabbit who has to flee his home but sees the world while he is running for his life. If she catches the metaphor, she doesn't say anything. 

She tells him about a princess with the soul of a dragon that lets the prince pierce her heart so she may be set free. She dismisses it as a silly story, but Julian doesn’t miss the sadness in her eyes. 

They lapse into silence eventually, the candle light dwindling. It's only when the last one finally snuffs out that Allison speaks again. 

“I have another one,” she says, quietly. Julian gestures for her to go on. 

“My mother used to tell this one to me,” she says, not quite looking at him, her gaze far away. “I don’t know how I still remember it, because she hasn’t had time to tell me much of anything recently.” She doesn't even try to staunch the bitterness that floods her voice. Julian doesn’t mind. “It used to terrify me, actually.” She takes a deep breath, dragging on of the many pillows to hold in her lap. “Did you know Death didn’t use to exist?” 

Julian raises his eyebrows, and the start of a smile plays across Allison’s lips. She’s good at this, storytelling. 

“At the very beginning of time, there was only Life, capital ‘L’.” Allison lets herself smile fully now, and Julian is captivated. “There was no need for death, for anything or the sort, because the world was brand new, and not quite full yet. 

“But, of course, things had to change eventually. The world didn’t stay empty forever, and Life soon realized that there needed to be a cycle of sorts. An end and a beginning. A start and a finish. So Life searched far and wide, combing the souls of every living thing on earth for the perfect vessel. The perfect counterpart. 

“Life found one, after a couple thousand years, in the soul of a man. Time has forgotten his name, for when Life offered him eternity, for a price, of course, and he accepted, he became less and more, all at once. He became Death. The first, at least.” Allison pauses. Julian waits. “And for a while, it worked.” She looks Julian in the eyes. “Then Death’s humanity ruined it.

“If there’s one thing that is so human that it can almost never be purged away, it’s greed. Death was consumed by greed. He didn’t understand why he had to share his power with Life, why they had to split it in half. He thought that Life had reigned for long enough, and it was his turn. Life was tired, after all. He would be doing them a favor.” Allison’s smile twists into something rueful, something a little bitter. “So Death used the gift he had been given by Life to keep the balance, and he reaped Life’s soul, to take it for his own."

Julian waits. The last candle left burning succumbs and blinks out.

“But he couldn’t hold it," Allion continues, her eyes far away. "It was too much, and whatever scraps of humanity that still tainted him made him weaker. The force of the power of Life and Death combined, shattered him. Literally. 

“His soul ripped into fifty peices, scattering across the world and latching onto anything. Objects, buildings, rivers, people. But the thing was, Death was still needed. The cycle was still needed. There had to be an end, in order to have new beginnings, so those pieces of the soul are always trying to find each other, trying to reunite. 

“And it is said that whoever is able to collect all fifty pieces, becomes the next Death.” 

Allison falls silent, and for a moment, all Julian can do is hold his breath. 

“Do you believe it?” he asks, after what seems like an eternity. Allison sighs, looking down. 

“I don’t believe in much of anything,” she says, to her hands, and Julian nods. “Do you?” she asks. 

Julian blinks, and the impression of snow howles behind his eyelids. There’s a feeling of someone’s hands around his throat, and he thinks that perhaps he can feel his heartbeat in his head, pounding in his ears. 

“No,” he says. There’s a phantom ache in his chest. He ignores it. “No, I don’t think so.” 

Allison nods, copying him. Then she smiles. He smiles back. 

They don’t mean to fall asleep, but it sneaks up on them, dragging them under, and Julian doesn't really mind. There’s a foreign feeling embedding itself in his chest, and he can’t quite name it, but he thinks it's close to peace. As close as he can possibly get, at least.

It doesn’t last long. 

Julian barely feels like he closed his eyes before they are snapping open again, but he has no idea why. 

He sits up, fully alert, not quite fully awake, and the room is silent, still. 

It doesn’t feel right. 

He counts to ten, eyes scanning the room, until he finally sees it.

The window is open. 

Julian has never been allowed to open any of the windows in the entire house. They are to stay closed at all times. Even when it is blisteringly hot inside. Even when there is no one around. The windows stay closed. 

Julian opens his mouth to say Allison’s name, reaching over to shake her awake, when a gloved hand slams over it, effectively silencing him, and completely stopping his heart. 

“Touch her, and both of you die,” his attacker says, softly, right next to his ear, and it’s like he’s shoved forcefully out of his body and into a waking dream that feels far too close to a memory. 

He’s in an apple orchard, and in the distance, great white buildings rise from the hills, gardens hanging off the blinding white terraces as the sunlight spills over the valley like a cracked egg. 

_ Lost again, are we? _ a voice says to his left, and he turns his head to find a boy sitting next to him, smirking in a way that looks so familiar.  _ Where do you go, in that pretty little head of yours? _

Allison’s voice echoes in his head, as if from underwater. 

_ Hasn’t anyone ever called you pretty before? _

_ What do you want? _ he hears himself say, his voice sharp, but the other boy’s smile doesn’t waver. 

_ What is rightfully mine, of course _ , he replies. 

The dream, or memory, or whatever it is, slides into sharper focus, the sky going from almost grey to a blinding blue; the lines of the leaves above them becoming so clean cut that they almost look blurry around the edges.  _ And what is that?  _ Julian-not-Julian asks. 

The boy’s smile spreads like a stain, leaking a maniacal glint into his dark eyes. 

_ This _ , he says, reaching out and tapping Julian’s forehead with two fingers, before moving it down and tapping his chest.  _ And this. _

Julian opens his mouth to reply, when someone cries out, short and pained. He’s on his feet in an instant, a name on the tip of his tongue-

And then he’s back in the guest room, his attacker dragging him off the bed, his eyes fixed on Allison’s vulnerable sleeping form, and it occurs to him that he should start to struggle. His attacker hisses in pain as he drives an elbow into his side, but his grip is unrelenting. It’s only when Julian lashes out to attempt to knock over a nearby lamp, that he tightens his grip, and suddenly there is the unmistakable feeling of a knife being pressed in between his ribs.

“Easy,” the man says. “There are a couple ways we could do this, but only one that involves her living.” Julian attempts to bite the hand covering his mouth, but the glove is too thick, the hand doesn’t even twitch. “If you listen closely and do exactly as I say, I might even let you live, too.” 

It’s a lie. Of course it is. It has to be.

“Don’t lie to a liar,” Julian hisses, even though the glove muffles his voice. 

The man doesn't respond. He drags Julian out into the corridor and closes the door behind him with a soft click. 

"Now," the man says diplomatically. "This is very simple, get it right the first time, and we won't have any trouble. Screw up, and everyone in this house dies. Understood?" He doesn't wait for an answer, ploughing on without hesitation. "There is something that I need. In your father's office." 

Julian finally manages to shrug the man's hand off of his mouth, gasping in a lungful of fresh air. "Get it yourself," he spits. He couldn't care less about his father's possessions. 

The man sighs. "It's not  _ that  _ simple," he says. "I can't touch it." 

"Unfortunate," Julian says, wincing as the knife digs deeper into his side. 

“But you can,” the man continues. 

Julian scoffs. “That makes absolutely no sense.”

“Not much does,” the man replies. “I’m looking for a ring. You might have noticed it before.” He’s propelling Julian forwards as he talks, guiding them towards his father’s study. “It sits in a case above his desk, which is just terribly arrogant if you ask me.”

Julian has, in fact, noticed that ring before. He asked about it once, endlessly curious as he used to be, but his father responded by hitting him with a hot poker from the fireplace. He learned very quickly after that to stop asking questions. 

“All I need you to do,” the man continues, as they reach the door to his father’s study, “is take it down from the shelf, get it out of the case, and give it to me.” He reaches around Julian and opens the door, shoving him into the room but not following him, just blocking the exit. “See?” he asks, spreading his arms wide, his expression hidden by the black mask that obscures everything but his eyes. “Simple.” 

Julian doesn’t move, his mind kicking into overdrive as he searches for even a hint of a way out. The man is much taller than he is, and he’s armed, so Julian doesn’t have much hope in taking him in a fight, but Julian is probably faster, if only he could find an opening to bolt. 

“What if I refuse?” he asks, blatantly stalling.

“Take a wild guess,” the man replies. “Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.” His voice almost flattens as he says the last part, stretches and strains, which is weird. Compared to his flippant confidence that Julian is starting to seriously doubt, it sounds raw, like he means it. 

Julian frowns, pushing the thought away. 

He backs up, keeping his eyes on the door and man in his way. Every plan he can possibly think of comes up short. 

He has no idea if this man is alone. He has no idea if there is someone stationed in every room, waiting for his signal to murder everyone in their sleep. He has nowhere to run, no one to risk waking up. 

He glances back at the ring in question, dull under the shadows that engulf the room. 

He has no idea why it’s so important, and quite frankly, he doesn’t care. 

“Why do you need it?” he asks anyways, conversationally, as he drags his father’s chair over to stand on. Let the man judge him for it, he’s short and unashamed. 

“It’s not for me,” the man replies, after a moment, like he was debating answering at all. 

“Ah,” Julian says, climbing onto the chair and reaching for the case. “So you’re just a pawn.” 

The man sputters, but Julian doesn’t look at him, eyeing the small, nondescript ring through the glass that encases it. It’s either gold or silver, he can’t really tell in the darkness, and so small that it looks like it would only fit over his pinky finger. 

He thinks that the man says something scathing and defensive, but he barely hears. He thinks perhaps he's going crazy, because he swears the ring is whispering. He thinks that maybe, maybe none of this is real, and he’s just dreaming. 

_ Become me,  _ the ring seems to say, and Julian can’t move.  _ That is my price.  _

He blinks, and sees the apple orchard from before; panic that is not his own floods his veins. 

_ Time’s up,  _ the ring whispers. 

“Hey,” the man’s voice breaks through the haze in his mind, his tone suggesting that he’s said it several times. Julian’s head snaps up. “Let’s go,” the man says. “I don’t have all night.” 

And then, sudden as a crack of lightning, Julian cannot bear the thought of handing the ring over to him. He would rather cut off his own hand than give the man the ring. It’s so startling, his absurd conviction. His hands tighten around the glass, nevertheless. 

“Just give me the ring,” the man says. Julian blinks. 

He gets off the chair, sliding it back into its rightful place. 

The case seems to burn in his grip. 

“Good,” the man says, as he approaches. “Now open it, and hand me the ring.” 

Julian looks down at the case, letting his fingers search for a clasp, a hook, anything to give him a clue to opening it. He finds nothing. 

He gets within reaching distance of the man, and makes a split second decision. 

Without stopping to think, he lunges forward, slamming the glass case against the doorframe as hard as he can, shattering it in one smooth motion. In the next, he thrusts his hand into the pile of glass shards, scooping up the ring and ignoring the sharp pieces that bury themselves into his palm, ducking under the man’s arm and into the hallway in the same breath. 

He doesn't even try to stop his momentum, slamming into the opposite wall and pushing off of it to propel himself away, as fast as he can. The man shouts something after him, but doesn’t pay any attention, blood welling hot and heavy in his hand. 

He darts into the first room that he passes, slamming the door shut behind him and locking it, knowing that it won’t stop the man, just slow him down. 

Sure enough, the man collides with the door, and it shudders violently under the impact. 

Julian rips his eyes from the sight, focusing on the bloody mess that is his hand. The ring is completely coated in red, dripping with it, but he doesn’t care. 

“Neil!” the man shouts, or at least, Julian thinks he shouts. “Don’t! You have no idea what you're doing.”

It occurs to Julian, distantly, that that isn’t even his name. The door shudders again, creaking and moaning in protest. 

They’re probably waking up the entire household. Julian can’t really bring himself to care about that either. 

He holds the ring up to the light of the moon that spills through the window. He holds up his hand next to it. 

“Neil!” the man shouts. The door shudders one last time and gives, spilling the man inside. He says something in a language that Julian does not know. 

Julian slips the ring onto his little finger on his right hand-

And everything comes to a horrible, gasping stop.

The world takes a deep breath.

_ In _

_ Out _

And then blinding pain fractures his vision, his consciousness, his very soul, like a stone thrown at a mirror, and it takes everything out of Julian so suddenly that he can’t even manage to scream. 

He thinks he falls to his knees, his body unable to hold him. He thinks that the man reaches him, clawing at his hand, saying something that Julian cannot hear. He thinks he hears someone laughing, in his head, in his chest, his fingertips. 

“God, Neil, no,” the man says, holding Julian’s hand in both of his. He looks down at what the man is looking at, and finds that the ring has disappeared, leaving a vivid red line around his finger, where it should have been. “What have you done?”

"Don't touch me," Julain says, weakly. The man doesn't let go of his hand. "I said, don't touch me." 

"What have you done?" the man asks him again, and he looks so distressed, so earnest. 

Julian doesn't think, he just reacts, lashing out blindly in an attempt to rip himself out of the other man's grip, and in his haste, the other man reacts, just as suddenly, just as blindly. 

He still has a knife in one hand. 

Neither of them are thinking straight. 

In the same moment that Julian tries to put distance between them, the man grabs for him, and there is a horrible instant when everything stops.

Again. 

Again and again and again. 

Over and over again. 

Warmth blooms across his side. 

Julian goes to inhale and finds that he cannot. 

"Neil?" the man asks. 

Julian frowns. "Who's Neil?" he whispers. 

They both look down at the same time, and the man curses softly. 

There’s a dagger in Julian’s side, buried to the hilt. 

_ You have done this before,  _ the silence whispers.  _ You have been here before, in this terrible, never ending moment.  _

“Julian?” someone calls. It sounds like Allison. Julian tries, once again, to pull in a breath, however shallow. It’s like his lungs have stopped working. The man curses again. 

Julian chokes on something, and his mouth tastes like iron. 

The man looks up at him, and Julian realizes his eyes are green. Green like stolen jewels, green like priceless silk, green like the forgotten trees in an apple orchard. 

"I'm sorry," the man says. "I'm so sorry." 

Julian's vision cuts from black, to white, to black again. When he can see again, the man is gone. 

"Julian?" Allison's voice is getting nearer. He wants to call out to her, to help her find him, but he doesn't have the strength. 

His very bones feel like they are collapsing in on themselves, turning to dust within his body, and he can't move, he can't breathe, and can't think. 

He sees that apple orchard, behind his eyes, everytime he closes them. 

"You again," a voice says. 

Julian snaps his eyes open. 

For a moment, it looks like no one is there, but then the very shadows of the room seem to condense and curl in on themselves, solidifying into the shape of a person. 

There is a scythe in the shadow's hand, and a hood obscuring it's features, and Julian feels like he's repeating history. 

He has been here before. 

He has done this before. 

He has.

He has.

He has.

_ Again, again, why is this happening again?  _

"Do I know you?" Julain whispers. 

The shadow tilts its head. "Depends," it says. 

Julian frowns. "On what?" 

"On what you remember," the shadow says. 

Snow and steel and sickness howl, just out of reach. Deceit layered on lies layered on plots layered on history crescendo to a wail beneath his skin, a roar behind his eyes. 

"I think I remember a lot of things," he murmurs. 

"Not enough," the shadow counters. 

Julian attempts to smile. "Perhaps." 

The shadow hums in response. 

Then several things happen at once: 

Allison bursts into the room. 

She says his name, anguished and terrified.

The shadow says, "Better luck next time," and he's suddenly so much closer than before, picking up Julian's hand as if to check his pulse. 

And everything goes terribly, irreversibly dark. 

**South Carolina, Present**

X

Neil stands in front of the mirror, spotted with water and age, in the boy's locker room, and tries to relearn to breathe. 

It's not working. 

He breathes in, and the reflection in the mirrors shifts, ever so slightly. Instead of washed out locker room lights, there are lanterns, swaying as the flimsy wall of the medical tent billows with the gasps of the wind. Someone moans, whimpering, but there is no comfort. 

He breathes out, and it shifts again. The lanterns are replaced with torches, and the moaning turns to languid music that is all too familiar. 

He breaths in. It shifts again. He sees stained glass windows, hears echoing footsteps. 

He gasps, everything shifts. Sunlight glints off of steel. 

_ Breathe. Shift.  _ Fire rages. Unchecked. 

_ Inhale. Shift.  _ Someone shouts his name, but which one?  _ Nathaniel, Stephen, Alex, Chris, Felix, Julian, Luc, Dylan, Finn, Neil, Abram. Abram. Abram.  _

_Exhale. Shift._ _Inhale. Shift. Exhale-_

_ "Abram?"  _

There's a weight chained to his ankles, and the surface is retreating farther and farther above him. The sun only reaches so far, and he's leagues past its fingertips. 

" _ Abram, help."  _

_ Inhale, inhale, inhale, stop-  _

_ "Hurry-"  _

"Neil?" 

The locker room snaps back into focus, and his heartbeat solidifies into a soft knocking on the door. 

"Neil, are you ready?" 

_ Have I ever been?  _ he asks himself, absently. 

"Coming," he calls. 

Just before he drags his gaze away from the mirror, it shifts again, but that's not really the right way to describe it. It shudders. It warps. It swallows itself whole. In the darkness, a scythe glints. 

Neil rips his eyes away, his heart collapsing in on itself. 

He's fine. It's fine. Everything is fine. 

"Alright," Abby says through the door. "I'll be waiting in the car." 

Everything is not fine. Not even a little bit. 

Neil ignores that, and pushes the door open, making his way out to the parking lot. 

He doesn't really remember what happened the day before, after Kevin left. It's all blurry and messy, and he definitely passed out again somewhere in there. Thanks to the dehydration and such. 

He does remember the woman's, Abby's, misplaced kindness as she forced some liquids into him and made him go to sleep. 

He does remember her telling him that she would take him to her house the next day, and they could figure out the next step, as if there was a next step. He remembers agreeing, and then immediately regretting it. 

These people can't help him anymore. 

Kevin can't help him anymore. 

He has hit rock bottom, and the ground has opened up beneath him, swallowing him whole and leaving him with broken ribs, broken hopes, broken chances. 

He's doomed to fall, and just keep falling. 

There's nothing they can do to change that. 

But he also has no idea what he's going to do next. He's just not giving up. Not yet. 

He approaches Abby's car, glancing at his reflection in the passenger side window and trying to ignore the shadow over his shoulder. He doesn't turn around, knowing that nothing will be there if he does. 

Abby doesn't try to talk to him on the way to the house, which he appreciates, and it is only a few minutes before they are pulling into the driveway of a charming house nestled in the corner of a small neighborhood. It makes him nauseous just looking at it. 

"Here we are," Abby says, as she opens her door and climbs out, as if it isn't obvious. Neil keeps his mouth shut. "Most of the team members will be arriving today," she says, as she unlocks the front door. "We'll all have dinner together here, so you're welcome to stay." Neil says nothing, completely at a loss of how to respond to that. "Until then," she continues, "we can figure out arrangements for you." 

"You really don't need-" Neil starts, but Abby cuts him off. 

"I know," she says, turning to face him fully after shutting the door behind them. "I know we don't need to do anything, and we are not going to force you to stay here, but Neil." She says his name like she has known him all of her life. Like it means something to her. Neil has no idea what to do with his hands, or where to look, how to breathe. "Neil, you don't have to leave, either." 

Neil almost scoffs in her face; he barely refrains himself. 

"You don't even know me," he says, because he doesn't know what else to say without sounding like an asshole. 

"No," Abby agrees. " I don't." She turns away from him, walking deeper into the house, and Neil has no choice but to follow. "But Kevin does." 

That time Neil does scoff. 

"Kevin," he says. He's almost surprised at the amount of bitterness and scorn he is able to pack into that one word. If Abby notices, she doesn't comment. 

"So," she says, as if he hadn't spoken. "Unless you have somewhere else that you desperately need to be, there's a room here for you, or at Wymack's, if you would prefer that." 

Neil pauses, arrested. "Wait," he says, just as they reach the kitchen. "Wymack?" 

"Yeah," Abby starts, but then the doorbell cuts her off. "Actually, he's right there." 

Neil shakes his head. It must be a coincidence. It couldn't possibly be- 

"David," Abby scolds. "How many times have I told you to leave your shoes by the door?" 

And then Neil turns around, and Wymack is in the doorway, and how the fuck did Neil  _ miss it?  _

Wymack meets his eyes, and all he can smell is salt. All he can see is the blinding sunlight dancing through the ocean waves, bending to sea foam to gold. 

He didn't notice, through the dizziness and the fear, the blinding anger and the pain. He didn't notice at all. 

"Got something on my face, kid?" Wymack asks, and Neil realizes he's been staring. 

"No," he says, trying his best to not sound as strangled as he feels. "No, it's nothing."

Wymack looks at him for a moment longer, his eyes calculating, then he nods and turns to go do whatever Abby asked him to do. 

Neil feels like he's swallowed a hive of bees. 

Jesus fucking christ, what is he doing there? What is he thinking? 

"Would you like to help?" Abby asks out if nowhere, and Neil almost jumps. "The others should be here in a couple hours." 

Once again, Neil doesn't know what to do, so he agrees. 

Once Wymack returns, she ropes him into helping too, and then Neil spends the entire time sneaking glances at him and attempting to complete whatever task Abby gives him. It's not awful, it's just unfamiliar. 

Wymack and Abby insert him so easily into the process that it makes him wonder how many times they have done this before. Invited a broken stranger into their home like they already belonged. 

The couple of hours that Abby promised pass in a blink, and far too soon the doorbell is ringing again. 

Neil is not prepared. Not in the slightest. 

_ Why am I here?  _ He asks himself, for the thousandth time.  _ What am I doing here?  _

He doesn't know. 

"Abby!" someone calls joyfully, dragging her name out until the person reaches the kitchen, where they throw their hands up like they just scored a touchdown. "Did you miss me?" 

Neil almost drops the pan of lasagna he's holding. 

"Of course I missed you, Matt," Abby says, and her laughter is fondly exasperated. "Now go set the table." 

"I have been here for  _ two minutes,"  _ Matt says, but he's smiling. He hasn't even noticed Neil yet. "Two minutes, Abby." With that he turns and pauses, his smile growing. "Well, hello," he says. Neil just stares at him. 

"Matt," Abby says. "This is Neil. Neil, this is Matt Boyd." 

"Third year backliner," Matt says, sticking out a hand. "Are you a new recruit?" 

Neil looks from his face, to his outstretched hand, and back again, still holding the pan of lasagna. 

"Um," he says, eloquently, and Matt laughs. 

"Oh, here," he says, "let me take that from you." He doesn't wait for Neil to respond, swooping the pan out of his grip and taking it over to the table, humming along the way. 

It takes Neil a moment to lower his arms. 

This cannot be happening. 

This cannot be fucking happening. 

The stench of roses permeates the air, and Neil knows that it’s not really there. He knows that it’s a memory. That doesn’t make it any less nauseating. 

“Neil?” Abby asks, and Neil jumps. “Are you alright?” 

“I’m fine,” Neil says. 

What are the fucking odds? 

He knows, objectively, that he could meet people again, in different lives, different times. He knows that life is like a giant circle, and people live it, again, and again, and again, without ever remembering who they were the last time, but he remembers. 

He remembers, and his history spans generations. And here are two fragments of that history in one house. It’s impossible, and yet. 

“How many plates do we need?” Matt asks, coming back into the kitchen, and Neil steps neatly to the side, out of the way. 

“Seven,” Abby replies, without looking up from whatever she’s stirring on the stove. “I think? It’s just you and the girls, right?”

“Allison isn’t coming, she’s at a friend’s,” Matt says. “So six.” Abby just nods. 

Matt gets to work, and Neil has never felt more untethered in his life. No one explicitly asks him to help anymore, so he doesn’t. His hands are going numb. 

Matt gets the entire table set, complete with a little vase of flowers that he steals from the piano in the living room, and moments later, the doorbell rings again. Neil swears that he loses at least four years of his life at the sound. 

“Matt, would you go let them in?” Abby asks, as she transfers the last dish of mystery food from the kitchen to the table. Matt practically sprints away, and Neil hears his incoherent shout of excitement as he opens the door. 

Neil counts to ten in his head, steeling himself for more introductions and more questions, but he only makes it to six before the two new arrivals are appearing in the entryway to the kitchen. 

He has the absurd urge to laugh, then he wants to cry, then scream. 

He doesn’t do any of that. 

“Girls, this is Neil,” Abby says, after giving them each a hug. “Neil-” She cuts herself off, her brow furrowing. She takes a step closer to him, but he takes a step back, his hip hitting the counter. “Neil? What’s wrong?” 

Neil rips his eyes away from the girls in the entryway, meeting Abby’s concerned gaze for a moment before it becomes too much, and he has to look away from her too. 

“I’m fine,” he whispers. 

“Neil-”

“Excuse me,” he says, pushing off the counter and stumbling out of the room. He makes it to the sliding glass doors behind the dining table and yanks them open, almost tripping and falling on his face in his desperation to get out. 

Abby’s backyard becomes a battleground, for just a split second, morphing into some strange blending of modern trenches pummeled by screaming shells and an ancient siege of some terrible fortress doomed to fall. 

He screws his eyes shut against it, but then all he can see is sails and ropes and salt, permanently crusted to the worn deck of a ship. 

Oh god, he needs to get out of there. 

He spins on his heel, fully intending on marching straight out of that house and getting as far away as possible, but he freezes in his tracks. 

Renee stands in the opening of the sliding glass doors, because it has to be Renee. How could it be anyone else? 

“Hello,” she says, kindly, stepping all the way out and closing the door behind her. It’s like a slap in the face. It’s like the past however-many-years it has been since he saw her disappear in the blink of an eye. 

Neil’s eyes skip to the reflection in the glass doors behind her, finding the outline of a scythe and skipping away again. 

“Neil, right?” she asks, not moving any closer to him. He doesn't respond. “I’m Renee.” 

_ I know,  _ he wants to say.  _ I know, I know, I know, I know.  _

“Everyone wanted to follow you, but I told them not to,” she says, and she sounds the same, holds herself the same way, looks at him the same way, like she eternally knows something that he doesn’t. “And I know this is probably very useless advice, but breathing is very helpful in most situations.” 

_ Dylan,  _ the past whispers.  _ Breathe. _

Neil sucks in a deep breath, and she smiles. 

“There you are,” she says kindly. 

He takes in another breath. Then another. 

“You don’t know me,” he says, feeling like a broken record. He doesn't understand their kindness. Not in the slightest. They have no ties to him, no debts, no attachments. He’s just a name and a face, and they are acting like it’s normal to treat him like he is anything more. 

“Maybe not,” Renee conceads, but then she tilts her head to the side, studying him, and the glint in her eyes is old. Wise. It says she has seen too much to properly hold within her. “You might be surprised, though.” 

Neil opens his mouth to respond, but trails off when there is movement on the other side of the glass. It’s Matt, bringing a pitcher of water to the table and setting it in the very middle. 

Renee follows his gaze. “You can stay out here longer, if you’d like,” she says, turning back to him. “Or, you can come back in, it’s your choice.” Neil just looks at her, at a loss for words. “I can tell them not to ask. About anything,” she offers. 

“It’s fine,” Neil says, eventually. “I’ll come back in.”

“Okay,” Renee says, smiling again, and that’s that. 

She holds the door open for him, and no one says anything about his sudden disappearance. Wymack joins them again, and then the meal is started, and dishes are passed around, and Neil finds that he cannot make eye contact with anyone, but the more glimpses he steals, the more he craves. 

Dan’s hair is a lot shorter than the last time he saw her, about four hundred years before, cut ruthlessly close to her head. It suits her. She laughs the same way, bright and frequently, and every time it feels like a shard of the sun is being shoved between his ribs. He’s scared that if she speaks directly to him, he’s going to slip up and call her Danni, and he really doesn’t feel like trying to justify that. 

Wymack has more tattoos, and his hair is also shorter. He smiles less, at least in this setting, but the one time Neil catches in, it’s like being punched in the face. If Dan’s laughter is like a shard of the sun, Wymack’s smile is a glimpse of the solar system through a telescope. It makes you rethink your perspective. It’s the same sky as always, just closer, and it feels rare, even though it’s not. 

Matt is louder than Neil remembers him, but then again, he only really knew him in a professional setting the first time. He carries the conversation effortlessly, dragging most of the laughter out of everyone, providing the main cause of Neil’s pain. 

It’s Renee that feels like she hasn’t changed at all, save for her hair. Where it used to be a dark brown chopped to her shoulders, it is now platinum blonde, and the ends are dyed in alternating pastel colors. But she looks at him like she  _ knows.  _ She looks at him like they are still barely strangers, but tied together by their unspoken, impossible promise to take care of each other, to  _ come back,  _ to make it out alive of the war ravaged Pacific. 

She’s the only one that catches him staring, and she gives him a challenging eyebrow raise in return. 

He looks away, unable to hold her gaze. 

It is at that moment, that he realizes that Kevin is not there. 

“Where’s Kevin?” he asks, before he thinks about it. He can’t believe he didn’t notice before. 

Everyone goes quiet at his voice, and Abby clears her throat. 

“He said he has something to do, and-”

“I’m here,” Kevin says, suddenly appearing in the doorway. Matt nearly jumps straight out of his chair in surprise. 

“Jesus  _ shit,  _ Day,” he sputters, looking down in dismay at the lasagna that he just spilled in his lap. “Don’t  _ do  _ that.” 

Kevin doesn't apologize, his eyes locking onto Neil’s. 

“I need to talk to Neil,” he says. 

Nobody moves, for an endless, agonized moment. 

Then Neil pushes back from the table and stands, dread setting into his bones. 

He follows Kevin through the whole house and out to the front porch, waiting patiently for him to find his voice. 

It takes him an eternity, opening and closing his mouth three times before he manages to say the very last thing Neil expects him to: “I didn’t tell them.” 

Neil has his mouth open, ready to verbally destroy him one last time, only to stop in his tracks. 

“What?” he demands. 

Kevin looks like he just ate something foul. “I didn’t tell them,” he repeats. 

“You didn’t tell them what?” Neil asks. 

“Anything,” Kevin says. “I had my phone out, the moment Abby told me to leave yesterday, and I almost called them. Called  _ him.” _

“But you didn’t,” Neil finishes for him. 

Kevin shakes his head. “I didn’t.” 

Neil stares at him. “Why not?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper. He’s not sure he wants to know. 

Kevin looks right back at him. “I don’t know,” he says, his eyebrows furrowing. “We’re free, Neil. At least, as free as we can get. What are you still fighting for?” 

Neil takes a step back, looking away from him. 

“I am not free,” he says. 

“Well don’t you want to at least try to live like you are? Just once?” 

“No,” Neil says, truthfully. 

“Why not-”

“Because they got what they wanted from you,” Neil says, cutting him off. “They’re done with you, but someone will always be trying to kill me.” 

“So run,” Kevin says. “So hide.” 

“I can’t, Kevin,” Neil says, shaking his head. “I can’t do that. And it’s not just my freedom, I promised Andrew that I’d get us out. I promised I would—” 

“Wait,” Kevin interrupts. “Wait, what? Andrew? Who’s Andrew?” 

Neil snaps his mouth shut. 

“Who’s Andrew?” Kevin asks again. 

“No one,” Neil says, through gritted teeth, but then he wants to take it back immediately. Andrew is  _ not _ no one. 

“Is he like us?” Kevin asks, but Neil is already shaking his head. Kevin doesn't seem to notice. “Have they caught him at all? How many times has he died?” 

“He hasn’t, Kevin,” Neil says, raising his voice to talk over him. 

Kevin stops in his tracks. “What do you mean  _ he hasn’t _ ?” he asks, incredulous. “Hasn’t what?” 

“He hasn’t died,” Neil says. 

Kevin stares at him. “Wait,” he sputters. “Wait, what?” Neil waits, returning his stare. Kevin almost chokes on his own tongue. “You aren’t talking about-”

“Yes, I am,” Neil says. 

“Death,” Kevin finishes, looking pale. 

“Yes,” Neil says. 

“Has a name.”

“Yes,” Neil says again. 

Kevin takes a step back. “You know Death’s name.” 

“I do.” 

“Oh my god.”

“Kevin-”

“Neil, do you know what that means?” Kevin asks, backing up more, his face filling with horror. “You’re going to become him.” 

“No, I’m not,” Neil says. Kevin shakes his head, almost falling off the porch as he continues to back up. “I’m going to free him.” 

“That’s not  _ possible-” _

“Yes, it is,” Neil snaps. “You don’t have to believe me. You don’t even have to help me. It’s not your promise to keep. But you do need to stay out of my way.” Kevin looks like he’s about to be sick, but Neil barrels on. “I am going to get the last piece of the soul, even if it kills me.” 

“It will kill you,'' Kevin says, and he sounds devastated. Neil wants to punch him. He doesn't. 

He lifts his head, injecting every ounce of defiance he possesses into his voice. He can’t live a lie, like Kevin wants him to, despite the fact that almost none of him is real anymore. 

He can’t live at all, not really, not until he fulfills his promise. All he can do is try. 

Neil looks Kevin in the eye, letting a ghost of a smile play across his lips. “Good thing I never really learned how to die quietly.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright kids it’s time for a fun fact or two. 
> 
> So, Julian’s story was set in Constantinople in 1570, however, it wouldn’t really be called Constantinople anymore, bc the whole point is that the Byzantine Empire (or the Roman Empire) had fallen years previous, trapping Julian’s family now in enemy territory. So it would be Istanbul. But Constantinople sounds cooler, so that’s what I used. Also the name Istanbul didn’t become Official until like 1930. So. 
> 
> Anyways, in my little story, Julian and Stuart want to run away to Italy, and that’s actually what a lot of people did after the fall of Constantinople. Poets, scholars, scientists, musicians, scribes, and philosophers fled the hostile territory to Western Europe, and some [sources](https://www.britannica.com/event/Fall-of-Constantinople-1453) even say that this exodus is one of the events that helped spark the Renaissance. How neat it that? 
> 
> I think that’s it. I don’t have much for this one. Oh well. 
> 
> As per usual, let me know what you thought, I’m always curious. :)


	5. Not a Hallucination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix tries to steal things with varying degrees of success. Neil is vey stressed. Very very stressed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty kids it’s another long one, hope you like it. :)
> 
> TW for drowning and general violence, as well as a panic attack.

**Santorini 1650**

V

Stories have a way of finding a mind of their own, over time. 

At least, that's what his father says. 

And Felix has always been terribly inclined to believe his father. 

"Danielle!" 

"There is no one aboard this ship with that name," Dan says, slamming her shoulder into his on the way by. "I haven't the slightest clue who you could be talking to." 

Felix pouts, following close behind her, nimbly stepping over haphazard piles of rope and fishnets. "Danielle Hennessy Wilds,” he says pleadingly. “I implore you." 

Dan deliberately does not look at him. "I'm not listening," she says. 

"Danni, please-" 

"Dad,” Dan calls, interrupting him. “Tell Felix to stop using his creepy mind manipulation and adorable face to make me do things he wants." 

Wymack doesn't even look up from the net he's mending. "Felix," he says. "Stop tormenting your sister and make yourself useful." 

Felix squints at Dan. "Mind manipulation?" he asks. Dan rolls her eyes. 

"No," she says, decisively, shoving one of her fingers in his face. Felix tries to bite it, but she pulls it away, just in time.

"I didn't even ask you yet," he protests, pouting again. 

"Yes, but once you do, I will never be able to refuse,” Dan says. “So shut your mouth." 

"You are no fun." 

"Never claimed I was." 

“I just want to-”

“No.”

“But it’s just-”

“No.”

“Please-”

“No, no, and no,” Dan says, slamming down the rope she had been carrying. “It is too dangerous.” 

“What’s too dangerous?” Wymack asks, suddenly paying attention. 

“Nothing,” they both say at the same time. 

“Just this once,” Felix says, turning back to Dan. “Please, just this once.” Before she can open her mouth to say no again, like he knows she’s going to, he cuts in again. “I will find a way to go, whether you take me or not.” 

Dan pauses. 

Felix holds his breath. 

“Fine,” Dan says, on an exhale, and Felix almost jumps on her in victory. He manages to restrain himself. “But only because I do not trust you to behave yourself on your own,” she says. 

Felix laughs. “Well of course not,” he says. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” 

“I am sitting right here, you know,” Wymack says, unamused. “Could you at least  _ try  _ to do your devious planning out of my earshot?” 

“This ship is only so big,” Felix reminds him. “And I thought it was good to be open and honest with each other.” 

“Plausible deniability,” Wymack says. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Felix says cheerfully. “We never do anything illegal, or even of questionable morals, ever.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Wymack says. “Just don’t get caught, have each other’s back, and come back in one piece, alright?” 

“We will,” Dan promises, glaring at Felix, who smiles as innocently as he can. 

“Of course we will,” he says. 

That evening, after they help Wymack dock the ship for the night, Dan and Felix wander the docks for a little while, waiting for the sun to slip below the horizon. The sunset is blindingly blood red. 

“Sailor's delight,” Dan says as she watches it spill it’s crimson clouds across the darkening sky. 

“I don’t believe in luck,” Felix says, following her gaze. 

She shoves him playfully. “It’s not luck you imbecil,” she says. “It’s an omen.” 

“Yeah,” Felix says, once he rights himself. “Of good luck.”

“You are impossible.”

“So I've been told.” 

“Oh my gods,” Dan says, walking away, and he has to hurry to catch up with her. 

Once the colors have completely bled from the sky, leaving it dark and deep, they make their way to the very end of the docks, where the wood meets the cliffs, and there, hidden in the shadows, is  _ Η αλεπού.  _

_ The Fox.  _

Felix picked the name, and he is endlessly proud of it. 

“Ah, Hennessy!” a voice calls out from among the rigging and sails of the sleek ship. “I thought you were not coming.” 

“I changed her mind,” Felix calls back, smung. As they get closer to the ship, Felix can just make out the outline of Helena in the crows nest. 

“Of course you did,” Helena says. Dan lets out a long suffering sigh beside him, and he laughs. 

“Why did I introduce you to them?” Dan asks quietly. 

“No idea,” Felix replies, and then he’s running up the gangplank and making his way to the wheel. 

“Did I just hear Felix?” Castor asks, his head popping up from within the hold, a torch in his hand. 

“You did indeed,” Felix replies as he finally makes it to the helm and slips both hands around the spokes of the wheel, weathered smooth from use and sea spray. He has the shape memorised. 

“Thank the gods,” Castor says. “We’re saved.” He ducks back into hold, but his voice echoes as he says, “Leo! Felix is here!” 

“And Dan,” Felix reminds him. 

“And Hennessy!” Castor adds. Then he falls silent for a moment, listening, before popping back up again. “Leo says you’re both idiots,” he informs them. 

“We are well aware,” Dan mutters on her way by him. Felix gives them both a blinding smile. 

“All of you, shut your mouths,” Talia hisses, and Felix pushes herself onto his tiptoes to see over the railing, finding her below him in the doorway to the captain’s quarters. She turns and looks directly up at him, glaring. “The whole point of this is secrecy.”

Felix salutes her. 

“Dan,” Talia says, turning back to her. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“It was either just Felix, or both of us, and I feel much better when it’s both of us,” Dan replies. 

“What?” Castor says, coming up to join them. “Do you not trust us or something?”

“I don’t trust Felix,” Dan says. 

“Wise,” Felix says, smiling. 

“Great,” Talia says, in that no nonsense tone of hers. “We were just getting ready to cast off. Felix.” She pauses, striding towards the stairs. “Get your paws off my ship.”

“My ship, technically,” he says. 

“You gave it to me, that makes it mine.”

“You have partial custody,” Felix says, but he lets go of the wheel once she makes it there. 

She takes his place, looking perfectly at home at the helm. “Go make yourself useful,” she tells him. 

“You sound like my father,” he replies, skipping down the stairs. She makes a rude hand gesture at him in response. 

Between the six of them, they manage to cast off smoothly.  _ The Fox  _ was built for speed and stealth, so it is small and unassuming, but almost deadly in the water. 

Felix watches as the sails unfurl, and he can’t help the giddy excitement that floods his veins. Adrenaline is a drug, and he is thoroughly addicted to it. 

Danger is so terribly tantalizing, and he almost craves it. 

Before long, they spot their target. 

A fleet of ships showed up in Santorini about a fortnight ago, bringing with them scores of merchants looking to sell their wares. Of course, with a fleet that big, and cargo that obviously precious, the prospect of attempting to rob one of them is just too tempting. 

And of course, Felix has never been able to back down from a challenge. 

A fact that Dan constantly laments. 

Their target just so happens to be the smallest of the fleet. The least likely. They want to come out of it alive, after all. 

"Regular plan," Talia says from the helm. "We've gone over it, everyone should know what to do." 

"Aye aye captain," Felix says. 

"Shut your mouth," Talia replies. 

Felix cackles. 

Within a couple minutes, they are coming up next to the hulking form of the anchored _ Χάρος. _

The deck is completely dark, save for a single lantern swaying from the mast, casting an eerie glow over everything. 

On the way by, Felix’s eyes catch on the figurehead, and then, for some reason, he can’t seem to look away. 

It’s unnerving and untraditional, a figurehead carved of dark wood and looking almost brand new, depicted as a hood obscuring its face, and it’s carved to look like it’s reaching for the horizon. The most off putting part of it, however, is what it’s holding: a scythe. 

Felix feels like he's having deja vu.

“Who would ever want to name their ship  _ Death _ ?” Castor mutters from somewhere in the darkness. “I feel like that’s just bad luck.” 

Felix shivers. 

“Helena,” Talia whispers. “Go.” 

Silent as the night, Helena swings from the crows nest of  _ The Fox  _ to the deck of the  _ Χάρος. _

Felix begins his countdown. 

_ Three minutes.  _

_ The Fox  _ continues her quiet drift until they reach the back of the other ship. 

Felix is already moving when Talia softly calls his name, but Dan’s hand on his arm makes him pause. 

“Be careful,” she whispers, putting both of her hands on his shoulders. 

“I am always careful,” Felix replies, smirking. She shakes him slightly. 

“Promise me,” she says, and she sounds so much more earnest than she usually does. Felix lifts his hands to remove her’s from his shoulders, giving them a light squeeze. 

“I will be careful,” he promises letting go of her hands and taking a step back. “See you in a bit.” With that, he flashes her a smile and spins on his heel, taking a running leap off the deck of  _ The Fox  _ to the hull, using his trusty hook to latch onto wood. 

_ Two minutes.  _

Felix counts down the seconds under his breath, maneuvering carefully around the side of the ship until he is able to peer through the giant window in the back. Why these merchant ships are always designed with such easy methods of access, Felix doesn’t know. 

He gets down to a minute when someone moves inside the room, coming from out of sight to sit at the largest desk Felix has ever seen. 

It is a man with dark hair and ramrod straight posture. His features are a little warped through the tempered glass of the window, but even still, Felix gets the strangest feeling that he has seen the man before. It’s on the tip of his tongue. 

He gets so distracted in trying to place the man that he jumps when the first gunshot goes off, nearly losing his grip on the side of the ship and falling backwards into the water, which would have been nearly catastrophic. 

He manages to right himself just as the man leaps up from his desk and hurries out of the room, and again, Felix begins to count. 

He reaches zero, holds his breath, and slams the hook into one of the glass panels as hard as he possibly can, just as the sound of some of Leo’s more noisy explosives go off, right on time. It takes him three tries before the glass finally gives, but he manages to shatter it just before the sounds of the light display on the deck die off. 

Felix grins, slipping through the sizable hole he has made, his boots crunch against the shards of glass on the ground. 

They’re in. 

He allows himself one steadying breath, then two, and then, for the last time, he begins to count again. Up this time. Like a sort of list. 

One: get in, alert no one. Surprise is key. 

Two: search the captain’s quarters. They are always filled to the brim with excessive opulence. 

Felix flits around the room, his feet barely making a sound as he opens drawers and closets, pocketing a fancy golden pin, a small bag of coins, and a flask of something that tastes like rum. Everything else he places back exactly where he found it, except for the map that is sitting on the desk. That he vandalizes using one of the fancy fountain pens and drawing a little fox in the corner, smiling to himself. 

He is just preparing to leave the room and sneak elsewhere when something catches his eye from under the bed, and he pauses midstep. 

It looks like a box that has been carelessly shoved under the bed, a corner of it sticking out and the covers hastily thrown over it. 

Felix’s curiosity wins out over his caution, as it always does. 

He wastes no time in extracting it from it’s not so clever hiding place, running his hands over the smooth wood that just makes him think of the ship's dark figure head. He frowns, pressing the pad of his thumb onto one of the corners just hard enough to feel it. 

Once again, there is that feeling of seeing this before. Doing this before. 

Something just out of reach echoes in the very back of his skull. 

Felix shakes his head, dismissing the thought. He doesn't have time to deal with misplaced deja vu. 

The box doesn't have any visible latch, but Felix is determined. He runs his hands all over the surface again, searching for a lip, or a hook, or  _ something _ , when finally, he finds it. A little tiny dip in the wood, on the bottom of the box. Felix presses it and pulls. 

For a moment, nothing happens, and then something from inside the box clicks, and a little lever pops out of the side, and Felix can’t help but smile, feeling just a little giddy. He pulls that, and then the lid of the box shifts. Felix follows the movement, slipping it completely off, setting it aside, and staring. 

Inside the box, nestled in black silk, is a diadem of sorts. 

It looks priceless. 

All of Felix’s breath escapes him in one exhale. 

“Oh,” he whispers, although he isn’t sure why.

_ Run,  _ a voice says suddenly, quietly, as if an echo from millions of years ago, and Felix finds that he is unable to move, unable to take his eyes off of the giant ring of gold.  _ Run.  _

Felix blinks, and he’s somewhere else entirely. 

He’s in a very dark room, and someone is breathing heavily, gasping to fill uncooperative lungs, and it might be him, but he can’t actually tell. 

“ _ Julian _ ?” someone calls, but then everything twists and melts and warps and the words become: “ _ My king.” _

Felix blinks again, sucking in a breath, and suddenly everything is different, filled with a different kind of darkness; it’s deeper, somehow. 

_ “Long live the white rose,”  _ another voice whispers, and then it changes again and someone is saying, “ _ Radames? Radames are you there?”  _

And then Felix blinks back into the present, and finds the diadem in his hands, with no recollection of picking it up. 

Only then does he realize that it is not big enough to be a diadem, unless it was for a child. 

Looking at it, he thinks for the first time, that perhaps it is not a crown at all. It is, in fact, the perfect size to fit around someone’s neck. Like a collar. 

Something like dread settles in Felix’s stomach, and he abruptly stands, slipping the collar-diadem thing into the larger inside pocket of his jacket. He needs to keep moving. He’s already wasted enough time. 

Felix counts in his head: _one, two, three, find a way below decks._ _Search every corner and every room. Find all the places where valuable things go to hide._

He takes a deep breath to reorient himself, feeling like the diadem is burning a hole in his pocket, and keeps going, opening the door to utter chaos. 

It’s enough to snap him back into himself, and he charges into the fray, paying no attention to who is fighting who, just trying to get around them, his eyes set on the open trap door leading down, down, down. It takes him approximately thirty seconds to reach his goal, and then he is plunging into the bowels of the ship, dodging a few sailors on his way past. They pay him no heed in the confusion. 

He thinks, for a moment, that he’s going to make it. That he’ll be able to jump right back on track and complete his part of the plan. 

He almost does, then someone slams into him, sending them both flying against the wooden wall of one of the many corridors in the hold. 

"Watch where you're going," his assailant snaps, shoving him against the wall again, and Felix almost forgets that he's supposed to be invisible. He almost snaps back, venom clawing up his throat until he manages to swallow it. 

He hangs his head, channeling his best useless cabin boy energy, willing the sailor to move on. 

_ Twenty three minutes, _ his mind supplies, unhelpfully. 

At least four things left to do. At least. 

But then the stranger doesn't move, so Felix looks up, and the stranger says, almost breathlessly, "Neil?" 

Felix frowns. 

"Excuse me?" he asks, before he can think about it. 

The stranger takes a step back. 

"Neil," he says again, and this time it is not a question. 

"Who?" Felix asks. Then he shuts his mouth. He does not have time for this. 

“Shit,” the sailor says, and Felix needs to find a way around him. He’s a lot taller than Felix is, so his best option is probably just to run for it and hope he will lose him in the confusion that is slowly devouring the ship. He doesn't even make it one step before the sailor’s hand is closing around his wrist. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he hisses, and Felix flinches. 

“Let go of me,” he snaps, trying valiantly to twist out of the sailors grip, but only succeeding in making him hold on tighter. 

“You can’t be here,” the sailor says. 

Felix slams his forehead into the bridge of the sailor’s nose in response, satisfaction curling in his gut at the savage  _ crunch.  _ The sailor cries out, letting go of Felix, and Felix does what he does best. He runs. 

He makes it around the corner before he hears the sailor yell after him, but he doesn't stop. He has no idea what just happened. He carefully crafted list all but falls apart in his head. 

He uses the pound of his feet against the floor and counts, because that's all he can think to do. 

One: get in. Silence is key. 

Two: search the captain's quarters. 

Three: find a way below decks. 

Four: find something worth taking. That’s the whole point of this. He can lower it down to one thing, but he doesn't really want to. None of the risk is worth it if he does not manage to take enough to be more than a nuisance. 

Five: get out. He needs to get out. He didn’t like the crazy light in that sailor’s eyes. 

“Felix!” someone shouts, and he skids to a halt. Castor waves at him from down one of the many winding halls. Honestly, Felix does not understand the architecture of this ship. “Thank the gods.”

“What?” Felix asks, once he reaches Castor, but Castor just grabs his wrist, in the exact place that the sailor did, and drags him farther down the hall. 

“We found something,” Castor says, and for the first time in his life, he sounds deadly serious. 

“What?” Felix asks again, but Castor doesn't answer, coming up upon a giant door that looks far too heavy to just be able to open. He lets go of Felix to yank on it, and when Felix is finally about to glimpse what is beyond, he freezes. 

Helena looks up when the door groans open, her steely eyes tipping just past wild. 

“Felix,” she says, the same way that Castor said  _ thank the gods.  _ “Get in here, you're so much better at this than I am.” 

Felix finds that he is unable to move, to speak. Castor shoves him in anyways. 

“Hurry,” he says, urgency eating at the edges of his voice. 

The room is full of cells. 

Cages, really. 

And the cages are full of people. 

Felix jerks into motion, crouching down beside Helena where she is bent over an iron lock on one of the cages. 

“I can’t-” Helena says, helplessly, and Felix plucks the lock picks that he gave to her as a gift the year before neatly out of her hands. 

It takes him longer than he wants it to, a couple minutes, and as soon as that lock pops open, he moves onto the next, taking steadying breaths to keep his hands from shaking. 

“What the fuck?” he asks, with feeling. 

“I don’t know,” Helena replies, knowing exactly what he means, as always. 

“Let’s go,” Castor says, and Felix hears the iron hinges protest as they swing open. “We’re getting you out.” 

Felix doesn't watch the people in that cell flood out, moving onto the next lock. 

_ What the fuck have they gotten themselves into?  _

This is not some ordinary merchant vessel. 

“Hurry,” Helena says, and another door groans as it swings open. 

Someone says something that definitely is not Greek. Felix ignores it. 

There goes his list. 

He just manages to get the second to last lock open, when the bone shattering crack of a cannon goes off. 

Felix locks eyes with Helena, and he can tell that they're thinking the same thing. 

_ Time's up.  _

"Castor," they say at the same time, but when Helena stops, Felix plows on. "Get everyone out." 

"Felix," Helena says. 

"You too," he interrupts her. "I'll get this one open, and I'll be right behind you." 

Helena and Castor both stare at him. They are the youngest three in the rag tag group that Dan and Talia started so long ago, as a game, but both of them are still older than Felix. 

" _ Go,"  _ Felix says. "I'm right behind you." 

He doesn't wait to see if they will comply, turning back to the lock and working as fast as he can. 

He hears hurried footsteps as they leave. 

Otherwise, the people are eerily quiet. 

Finally, finally, he gets the last lock open, ripping it out of the way and yanking the door open. 

"Let's go," he says, making room for the five people in the cell to get out. 

None of them move. 

"What are you waiting for?" Felix snaps. "We're running out of time." 

The man in the front looks over Felix's shoulder, his face stiff and hard as steel, fear swimming in his eyes, and he says, in broken, stilted Greek, "We are already out of time." 

Felix's heart drops to the floor. 

He spins around, and there, in the massive doorway, stands the sailor from earlier, green eyes flashing. 

“Shit,” Felix says, and the sailor smiles grimly. 

“Everybody out,” he says, authority ringing through his voice, and it is probably the last thing anyone in the room expects him to say. “Unless?” he says, when nobody moves. “You’d like to stay?” 

That gets them moving. Their exit is just as silent as the other prisoner’s was, and Felix tries to follow the tide and slip out with them, knowing it is a losing battle but trying anyways. 

“Not you,” the sailor says, grabbing his upper arm to stop him, and Felix automatically flinches. He uses the momentum to haul Felix backwards, ignoring him when he very nearly trips over his own feet. 

“What do you want?” Felix spits, trying and failing to wrench out of his grip. 

“Be quiet,” the sailor replies, looking behind him at the open door. 

“Just let me go,” Felix says. “I am nothing to you. I am no one. You won’t get anything out of killing me or capturing me.”

The stare that the sailor turns on him is so condescending that Felix barely refrains from shrinking under the weight. 

“If you still believe that,” he hisses. “Then you are as good as dead.” 

"You don't know me," Felix protests. "I have never met you in my life." 

The sailor shakes him. "Snap out of it," he demands, and Felix has no idea what he's talking about. "We don't have time for this." 

"For what?" Felix asks, his voice rising. 

The sailor looks over his shoulder again, like he expects someone to come in at any moment. Like he's not supposed to be here at all. 

"You should remember by now," he says. 

"Remember what?" Felix practically shouts, ripping his arm out of the sailors grip so forcefully that he accidentally overbalances, barely managing to catch himself on with his hands before face planting into the perpetually damp wood. He gives himself half a second to catch his breath, and then he is surging back up again, his eyes on the door, on his only way out. 

Just then, the diadem slips free from his inside pocket and hits the floor with a muted thunk, rolling away from the door. 

For a moment, Felix and the sailor just look at it, and then they look at each other, and then they are both lunging for it as it rolls farther away. 

Felix, being smaller, gets there first, but just barely. The sailor manages to grab a hold of it too, and then he won’t let go. 

“Where did you find this?” he hisses, trying to yank it away, but Felix holds fast. 

“Finders keepers,” he snarks, because he doesn't have a filter. 

Then someone calls, “Kevin?” and the sailor freezes. 

“Fuck,” he whispers. Felix looks past him at the door way, his panic mounting in great, pounding waves. He needs to get out. There’s someone else coming. 

If they get in here, he will never make it out. 

“I’m sorry,” the sailor says, and it catches Felix off guard, his eyes snapping back to the sailor’s, and for a second, it’s like the words double, then triple, like several people are saying it at once. 

Then, before Felix can so much as blink, the sailor is using his momentary shock to rip the diadem out of his hands, pry it open, and slam it around Felix’s neck. 

And in that exact moment, several things happen at once: 

Light explodes behind Felix’s eyes, consuming him for a split second, and for the space of that split second, he is lost in a blizzard, trapped in a palace, drinking wine from a goblet of gold. It changes, becoming a goblet of iron, and then he is standing in the middle of a trampled, bloodied field, as the world crashes down around him. 

It feels like all of that is imploding inside of him, and he’s dying, he’s dying, he’s dying. 

Felix crumples to his knees, clawing at the horrible collar as it begins to burn, his mouth opening in a silent scream. 

The door, his only exit, tips open just a little more, and another man stands in the doorway, dressed head to toe in red and black. 

He says something to the sailor that Felix cannot catch. 

“I tried to stop him,” he thinks the sailor says, but he can’t be sure. 

The world is moments away from melting around him. He can’t breathe. 

“Fine,” he hears the other man say. The one in the doorway. “See to it that you do not let this happen next time.”

“Yes, master,” the sailor says. 

The man in the doorway sighs. “Leave him,” he says, and Felix sees his feet turn away from his vantage point, doubled over on the floor. “All he can do for us now is die.” 

Felix watches the footsteps disappear past the door frame, pain clouding his vision, and looks up just in time to see the sailor start to follow. 

“No,” he tries to say, but it comes out as more of a gasp. His neck feels like it is on fire, but then he reaches up to claw at the diadem again, and his fingers meet only his own ruined skin.

The sailor turns around as he reaches the door, watching as Felix attempts twice to stand and fails, both times. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, but Felix doesn't reply. “This wasn’t supposed to happen again.” 

“Again?” Felix chokes out, but then the sailor is pulling the giant door closed behind him, and panic slams back into Felix, full force. 

“Wait,” he says, desperately, brokenly. “Wait, stop.” 

The sailor doesn't stop, and Felix just manages to force himself to his feet and throw himself at the door when it closes with a deep, resounding crack. He pounds on it anyway. 

“Stop!” he shouts. “What are you doing? Let me out!” 

The sailor doesn't come back. 

Felix screams himself hoarse, knowing that no one will be able to hear him, knowing that the chaos will be enough to trap him as everyone is too busy saving themselves, but trying anyway. 

There is nothing in the room to help him, nothing to ram against the door, nothing to use as leverage, so he resorts to using his shoulder, slamming again and again into the unyielding wood and hoping it will shift. 

It doesn’t. 

Finally, he slams into it so hard that he sees stars, and he’s pretty sure that he just dislocated his shoulder. He slides to the ground before he can even attempt to continue standing. 

_ Oh gods, Wymack is going to be so angry,  _ he thinks, and abruptly, he wants to cry. 

He can’t remember the last time he cried. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to no one, to the ceiling, to the stars he can’t see. He already feels like he’s drowning. “I’m so sorry.” 

Just then, there is a crack like thunder, and then the entire ship convulses, shuddering under the impact of the cannons that the first blast promised. It sounds again, and again, and again, until quite suddenly, the ship lets out a blood chilling moan, and everything begins to tilt. 

It happens so fast, one moment, everything is rightside up, and then next, the world is completely flipping, sending Felix sprawling onto the former ceiling of the ship’s hold, and he knows in his bones that the ship is sinking. 

It’s sinking, and he’s not going to make it out. 

Within seconds, his ears are popping, and the wood is groaning alarmingly, and Felix pushes himself up onto his elbows, pain flaring in his shoulder, only to shove himself fully to his feet as water begins to collect, seemingly from out of nowhere. 

Horror digs claws into his throat, ripping it to shreds and keeping any oxygen from reaching his lungs. Black spots dance in the corners of his vision. 

He's going to die. 

" _ You're going to die, Neil, _ " a voice says, but it sounds so far away, as if from within a memory. " _ Again and again and again. Over and over again. It is what you were destined for."  _

Felix staggers, tripping in the water that is now just above his ankles. 

His vision triples, and he thinks he sees an apple orchard, a vineyard, a palace; they merge in his head, echoing at laughing and screaming all at once, and he can't seem to focus on one. To focus on anything. 

_ Neil,  _ a different voice whispers. Neil _ , come.  _

_ Neil, run.  _

_ Abram.  _

_ Abram, run.  _

Felix shuts his eyes, willing everything away. It doesn't work. Of course it doesn't. 

“Oh,” a new voice says, but it sounds closer, more tangible than the voices in his head. “This is new.” 

Felix’s eyes snap open at the sound, but he shuts them again, just as quickly. 

He’s seeing things. 

He swore he just saw—

“Hiding?” the voice asks, and Felix forces his eyes open. 

There is a beat of dreadful silence as Felix stares at the figure cloaked in darkness in front of him, then he says, “You’ve got to be fucking kiddng me.” 

The figure doesn't say anything, doesn’t move at all. 

Stories have a way of finding a mind of their own, over time. 

At least that’s what his father says. It’s his opening line for every story he has ever told. 

And Felix has always been terribly inclined to believe his father. 

But this? 

This was one story that he stopped believing in a long time ago. 

This is the story that Wymack always told after dark, on the rare nights where the moon chose to hide from the stars, about a man cloaked in darkness and made of bone, who carries a scythe with him to reap the souls of the dying. 

Felix feels the absurd uge to laugh. 

He has to be hallucinating.

“I’m guessing you are not here to save me,” he says, because again. No filter. 

“Good guess,” the figure replies, to his abject shock. 

This has to be a hallucination. 

Hallucinations don't speak. 

He's losing it.

“Educated guess,” Felix corrects, gesturing at the scythe in the figure's hands. His mind will have to falter somewhere. It’s not real. It can’t be real. It’s his mind going into shock. “Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself?” 

The figure tips his head in response. The effect is unnerving, as his face is completely obscured by a large hood. It feels so familiar. Why does it feel so familiar?

“I am not dead yet,” Felix continues, doing his best to aim for nonchalant and falling miserably short of his target. He’s going crazy. He’s dying, and he’s talking to himself. “So you can fuck right off for about twenty mintues. Surely you can wait that long.” 

“You have eighteen minutes,” the figure replies. 

Felix does laugh then, his mild hysteria getting the better of him. “Yes, thank you,” he says. “That’s just brilliant. I have eighteen minutes left to live, and if it’s all the same to you, I would rather not spend them in your eternal shadow.”

The figure hums, considering. 

“Careful what you wish for,” he says eventually, and Felix pauses. 

“What?” he asks, quietly, carefully. He catches the melancholy scent of roses, tastes the bitter bite of wine. 

“You heard me.”

_ Again, again, over and over again.  _

Something restless inside Felix settles, tucking in it’s tired wings like a sparrow landing home, and everything seems to align. 

_ Not a hallucination.  _

“How many times have we had this conversation?” he asks, before he even consciously decides to. As soon as he says it, something snaps in his head, like a bow stretched taut and then released, and memories assault him. 

_ The life of fear in the very place he was supposed to belong. The ring, the ring, the ring, the ring.  _

_ The treason committed over the color of roses and the succession to the throne, a cup meant for another.  _

_ The cold, the snow, the sickness that took and took and took and left nothing but ashes behind.  _

_ The Holy War, too old for anyone to properly remember, yet fresh as spilled blood in his mind.  _

_ And older still: fleeing under the watchful cover of darkness, green eyes and the taste of panic.  _

_ And older still: a world drenching in torchlight and bronze, gold statues and gold stars and cold gods.  _

_ And older still: apple orchards and blinding white trellises and  _ it’s starting, and so it begins;  _ snake venom and blurry sunsets and regret, so much regret.  _

“I haven’t kept count,” the figure says.

“Liar,” Felix whispers. “You know.” 

“Do you?” the figure replies. 

Felix looks down at his hand, where the silver scar around his thumb has always been. He fingers the new one around his neck, and it stings, but his hands come away clean.

“I think I’m starting to,” he says. 

The figure says nothing. 

The water climbs up his legs, cold and unforgiving. He ignores it. 

“What is your name?” he asks, without warning, another thought leaving his mouth without permission.

The figure seems to hesitate, for just a moment. Felix caught him off guard. “Death,” he replies. 

Felix shakes his head. “That is the name you took,” he says. “What is the name you were given?” 

“How do you know it is the name I took?” the figure, Death, asks. “How do you know that I have a name at all?” 

Felix laughs, joylessly, his voice choked with the panic he refuses to acknowledge. “Stories,” he says, and he knows he has said this before. “You are made of them, after all.”

Death plays along, his voice unchanging from it’s perpetual flatness. “They mean nothing to me,” he says, as he did the first time, and just like the first time, it makes Felix want to push him and pull him until he sounds real, tangible. It makes him want to find the humanity in all of that darkness, and he has never backed down from a challenge. 

“I know,” Felix says. Then, because he is incessant, he asks again, “What is your name?”

Death heitates, again, and Felix holds his breath. “Andrew,” Death says quietly, like he didn’t mean to say it at all, and there it is, a dip, a hole in his flawless calm. 

“Andrew,” Felix repeats, tasting the name in his mouth, latching onto it to drive all thoughts of drowning from his mind. 

It is deceptively, unexpectedly, human, that name. 

It feels right, somehow. 

The water has risen to his chest. It leeches the warmth from his body, and he shivers, wrapping his arms around himself. 

“What are we doing here, Andrew?” Felix asks, hating the slight waver that enters his voice. 

“Waiting,” Andrew replies. 

“Again,” Felix says. 

“Again,” Andrew agrees. 

Felix holds himself tighter as the water reaches his shoulders. It will lift him off his feet soon. 

“What if I don’t want to anymore?” he asks. 

“Your time is not up yet,” Andrew says. 

“No,” Felix says, looking at Andrew again. “What if I don’t want to die anymore? Why do I remember dying so many times?” His vision triples again, and his side aches, his chest aches, his lungs ache. The echoes of past deaths rise to the surface of his skin and it  _ hurts.  _ Like reliving each and every one of them, at the same time. He cannot breathe. 

“Because you have no choice,” Andrew replies. Felix stares at him, the water lapping at his neck. “You are just as cursed as I am.”

The water lifts him off his feet, and the pocket of air grows smaller, so much smaller. It becomes measurable. He’s running out of time. 

Always running out of time.

“How do I break it?” he asks, because there must be some way. There must be. 

Andrew tilts his head, mocking almost, but not quite. “You have already begun,” he says, pointing at Felix’s neck. 

Felix touches a hand to the new scar around his neck, reaching the other hand above him to brace himself on the ceiling. Or the floor, technically. The scar stings in the saltwater. 

“They killed me for this,” Felix says absently, mostly to himself. 

“Yes,” Andrew says. “And they’ll do it again, and again, and again, until there is nothing left of you to kill.” 

“Of course they will,” Felix says. Nevermind that he has no fucking clue who _they_ is referring to. A weird calm has stolen over him, and he doesn’t question it, falling gratefully into the embrace of apathy. No wonder Death uses this as his shield. “And if I get enough of these?” he asks, rubbing the scar around his thumb. 

“Only one way to find out,” says Andrew, says Death, says the very darkness around them.

Felix closes his eyes and counts the things that he knows: 

One: Death has a name. 

Two: he has met Death before. Several times, in fact. 

Three: someone is trying to kill him. Permanently. But it's only kind of working.

He allows himself one moment to think of Wymack, to think of Dan. 

_ I’m sorry,  _ he tells them, even though they will never hear. 

The water slips completely over his head, and he lets out his breath, willing the darkness to come faster, to consume him. 

It does. 

**Present**

X

Neil has the very beginnings of a plan, the bare bones, if you will, and surprisingly, it involves staying. 

It makes him vaguely uncomfortable. 

The thought of staying, that is. 

Staying anywhere. 

He has lived so many lives, too many to count or truly keep track of, but the thing is, he usually only gets half of a life. 

It always ends too soon. Too early. Ripped away before he is ready. 

"You look like you're soliloquying," Kevin says from the driver's seat. "Stop." 

Neil’s head snaps up, offended. "Fuck you," he says. 

"You can't keep making that face," Kevin informs him. 

"What face?" Neil asks. "This is just my face." 

"No, you get this look in your eyes. Like you’re fucking haunted or something. Don’t.”

Neil stares at him. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, using all of his willpower in an effort to not just reach over and punch Kevin in the face. “How many times have you died?” Kevin’s face hardens, but Neil keeps going. “How many times have you been murdered?" he amends. "I have lost my life more times than any one person has the right to, and I am sitting next to the person who took it away from me the most. I think I have the right to look fucking haunted or something.” 

Kevin glances at him. "They can't know," he says. 

"What?" Neil asks. "That you're just a pawn in a deadly game of clusterfuck chess?" 

"Neil," Kevin says, looking pained. "They can't know. I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Neil retorts. “You are not a coward, Kevin Day. Stop acting like one.”

They've reached the parking lot of the stadium, but Neil barely notices. Kevin slams on the brakes, and Neil barely keeps himself from smashing his head against the dashboard. 

"You don't know what you're talking about," Kevin says, his voice low, deadly. 

Neil, because he is an asshole, smiles. "Maybe," he admits. Kevin looks homicidal. “But I do know what I’m doing, Kev,” he continues. “Despite what you may think. I’ve had centuries to get here. Stop looking at me like that, I’m not going to tell them, but if they find out, they find out.” 

Kevin makes a strangled sound, but Neil is already getting out of the car. 

Kevin did a terrible parking job, taking up three different spaces, but neither of them really care, so Kevin just turns the car off and follows him out, reaching the stadium door before Neil to put in the code. 

He puts a hand on the doorknob but doesn’t open it, tuning back to Neil. 

“I’m not losing this,” he says, and his eyes are a dark, conviction soaked green. 

Neil doesn’t think he will ever be able to look Kevin in the eyes and not think about apple orchards and betrayal. 

“Good,” Neil says, shoving the intrusive memories into the deepest, darkest part of his mind that he never willingly visits, but somehow gets dragged back to anyways. “Glad to see you finally found something to fucking fight for.” 

Kevin glares at him, and Neil glares right back. 

Kevin looks away first, tugging open the door and leading the way in, his shoulders set with tension. Neil lets out a slow breath that he doesn't recall pulling into his lungs. 

They don’t say anything to each other as they make their way to the lounge, where the rest of the team is supposed to be meeting in about fifteen minutes. Unsurprisingly, only one other person has shown up, apparently just as keen on being as obsessively early as Kevin insists on being to most everything. 

Neil thinks it’s one of the team members that he hasn’t met yet, but then Kevin says, “Aaron,” in greeting, and the man looks up.

For what feels like the millionth time, Neil’s world stops, collapsing to a standstill with all the grace and subtly of a trainwreck. 

Flames lick at the edge of his vision, and he thinks he says something along the lines of  _ you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,  _ but he can’t acutally tell. 

Kevin, next to him, pinches his arm. Hard. 

“Stop,” he says, like he did in the car, so severe and so final that Neil doesn’t have any choice but to listen. 

"Fuck," Neil mutters. 

“Do I know you?” Aaron asks, his voice dark and brittle in all the places that Andrew’s is flat. He doesn’t have a British accent anymore. Of course he doesn’t. Neil’s mind latches onto that thought anyways, examining it at every angle and still arriving at the same scene. The same closing. The same fucking memory. 

_ You have a life to live,  _ past him says to a slightly different version of the boy on the couch,  _ so fucking live it. _

Sometimes, Neil feels like he is a fountain filled with far too many coins. They litter the bottom of his consciousness, stacking on top of each other and corroding together, polluting the water with their bright, bitter, coppery taste. And they won’t go away. No matter how he tries to be rid of their weight, they do not disappear. Only fade, and warp, and grow. 

“No,” Kevin answers for him, his hand coming up to clamp over Neil’s shoulder, to steady him. To hold him there. “This is Neil. Our new assistant coach.” 

Aaron frowns, his eyebrows drawing together. The look is so familiar, on his face, and so foreign, on Andrew’s. It makes Neil’s chest ache. 

“We need an assistant coach?” Aaron asks, disdain practically dripping from his voice, and that too is familiar. It makes Neil want to punch him in the face. 

_ What the fuck,  _ Neil thinks, almost hysterically.  _ This is too much to be a coincidence. Too precise to be fate.  _

“Whether we need one or not is irrelevant,” Kevin says, steering Neil by the shoulder to one of the chairs and all but shoving him into it. “He’s here now, so we’re going to use him.” 

“Can he talk?” Aaron asks, looking at Neil like he is a large bug in the corner of the bathroom. A little surprised at his presence, a lot disgusted, and mostly like he plans on doing nothing to change the situation. 

“He can,” Neil cuts in, before Kevin can say something horrible, finally finding his voice. “And he’s not about to be  _ used,”  _ he snaps, turning to Kevin. “Keep your hand or keep touching me, you can only pick one.” 

Kevin withdraws his hand. 

Just then, Renee walks in, followed by Matt and Dan. 

The sight of them is just as jarring as it was the last time. He doesn't think he will ever get used to it. 

But he wants to. Get used to it, that is. Get used to them. All over again. 

"Hello, Kevin," Renee says pleasantly. "Aaron, Neil." 

"Hi, Renee," Kevin returns gamely. Neither Neil nor Aaron say anything. Renee doesn't even bat an eye. 

"When did you guys get in, Aaron?" Renee asks, her voice sweet and soothing. "I didn't see you at the dorms last night." 

"This morning," Aaron replies, like it pains him. Renee just smiles. 

"Explains what you look like shit," Matt says, flopping onto one of the chairs and pulling Dan on top of him. Neil can't bring himself to be surprised. “Also, where’s Nicky?” 

Aaron just gives Matt a half hearted middle finger, before saying, “Locker room. Calling Erik.” 

Neil's worlds are colliding and he's caught somewhere in the middle, the force of the impact crushing him over, and over, and over again. 

“Neil?” Renee asks, and when he looks over at her, her expression is so familiar, it makes his heart ache. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Neil replies, a knee jerk reaction, but Kevin says, at the exact same time, “He’s fine.” 

The look Neil sends him is venomous, but he just glares right back. 

Renee hums, and the looks she gives them says she doesn’t believe either of them for a second, but she doesn’t press. 

Just then, the sound of a door slamming open echoes through the lounge from down the hall, and a muffled curse follows. 

“Fuck you,” someone snarls. 

“Likewise,” a different voice replies. 

Neil holds his breath. 

The last of the foxes. Complete strangers, probably. Maybe. 

Neil doesn't let himself think past that, fixing his eyes on his hands like they are the most interesting thing in the world, to avoid confronting the dread pooling in his gut. 

He won’t know them. 

He won’t. 

“God, I did not miss this room,” a woman’s voice says, rich and smooth as honey. The first person replies with some scathing that sounds like Spanish. Neil still doesn't look up. 

“And we didn’t miss you,” Aaron says. 

“Aaron,” Renee chides gently. 

“What?” he asks, but he sounds properly chided. Neil suppresses a small smile. 

“No, it’s alright Renee,” the woman says, false sweetness poisoning the initial honey of her voice. “We didn’t miss the little monster either. Also, you look like death, Minyard.” 

That time, Neil really does laugh, once, the sound escaping his lips without permission and cutting off too soon. He looks up at Aaron first, to find daggers being glared at him. 

God, he really does look like Death. 

Just angrier. 

Neil has to physically swallow his laughter then. 

“Something funny?” Aaron asks, and Neil shakes his head, clamping down on the shit eating grin that wants to take over his face. 

“Who in the fuck is that?” the first person asks, and Neil makes the horrible mistake of turning to look at the two new arrivals. 

His stomach bottoms out. 

_ Did you know Death didn’t use to exist?  _ A voice whispers in his mind. 

_ Allison.  _

_ They're lives are not more important than mine because they decided they had the right to wield the power of Death,  _ another voice echoes back. 

_ Seth.  _

Neil doesn't remember choosing to move, but somehow, suddenly, he is halfway out of the room and he doesn't stop, following the hall to the inner court. 

Someone calls after him, but he doesn’t slow, aiming for the plexiglass enclosed court but changing his mind at the last minute and mounting the endless bleachers. He makes it up the first three steps before he’s running, the burn in his calves a welcome mini distraction from. Well. Everything. 

He makes it to the top too soon, barely even out of breath. 

He wants to scream. It’s too much. It’s all too much. 

What the fuck is happening? 

Why were they  _ all here?  _

He didn’t think fate could be this unbelievably cruel. 

“God, Drew,” he whispers to no one, to the shadows, to himself. “I have to get this right.” 

_ There’s so much to lose.  _

“Neil?” 

Neil looks up to find Renee about halfway up the bleachers, her expression open and kind. Not really concerned so much as understanding. Fathomless understanding. 

“Walk with me?” she asks, tilting her head to indicate around the court. Neil hesitates for just the barest of seconds, then nods. She waits for him to meet her in the middle of the stands before starting off through one of the wider rows, so they can walk side by side. 

She doesn't say anything for a few moments, and Neil makes no move to fill the silence. If he opens his mouth at all he’s afraid that he might just start screaming and never stop. 

Then, finally, Renee says, “What do you remember?” and fucking hell, Neil hates that question with his entire being. 

“What do you remember?” he counters, instead of answering, his voice significantly more barbed than hers. 

“More than I would like to,” she says, softly, then adds, “I remember you.” 

Neil should be surprised. He really should. 

But somehow, he isn’t. 

Some part of him had guessed as much since that night at Abby’s house. 

He sees rain soaked tents, smells the bitter tang of gunpowder. 

“Does Kevin know?” he asks, but Renee is already shaking her head. 

“I have avoided the Families for this long,” she says. “That hasn’t changed.”

Neil falters, but Renee keeps walking, so he hurries to catch back up with her. 

“What?” he asks. “You-” he cuts himself off, shock warring with abject disbelief. “How?” 

The smile she gives him is small and sad. “I have my ways,” she says. “Not all Remnants are born within the Families’ reach.” 

Neil stares at her. 

He didn’t think it was possible. 

“So why are you here?” he asks. 

“Same reason you are,” she responds. “Mostly.” 

“How do you know why I’m here?” 

“You have forty nine pieces,” Renee says, like it explains everything. “Where else in the world would you be but here?” By this time they have made it an entire lap around the stadium. “Also,” Renee continues, her smile returning. “He hovers.” 

Neil’s gaze snaps to the plexiglass next to them, half expecting to find reaching, billowing shadows in the reflection. He doesn’t. 

“You’ve spoken with him,” Neil says. Not a question. 

“I have,” Renee confirms. “You know his name.”

“I do,” Neil says, unsure as to where she acquired that information, but at this point, he hardly cares. “I’m going to free him,” he says, quietly. 

Renee stops, turning to face him, and he stops too. Her eyes are fierce and filled with something that reminds him of skies filled endlessly with stars and lands drowning endlessly in sand. “Good,” she says. 

Neil breathes in, exhaling slowly. 

“I can’t lose this,” he says, letting the words get lost in the space between them, unsure of why he even let them slip out in the first place. 

Renee just tilts her head and says, “I know.” 

“They are all in that room,” Neil says, like a confession, like a prayer. But Renee is not a god. She’s not even a saint, and they both know that. 

They are simply souls of paper that history has rewritten and rewritten and rewritten, not bothering to erase anything, to start over at all, until all that’s left of them is bleeding ink and crumbling parchment. 

“I know,” Renee says again. “So fight for them.” 

Neil closes his eyes, and for the first time in a very long time, sees nothing. 

“I am,” he whispers. 

_ I will.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok so listen. This chapter takes place in Santorini, as you already know, and literally the only reason for that was the fact that a volcano erupted there around 1650. Underwater. I think? And then there was like a tsunami? Possibly? Anyways, whilst planning this fic I looked for famous events and big disasters that I could shove Neil into, bc why not, and that was one of them, and then I didn’t even end up using the volcano at all. Sad day. 
> 
> So anyways, that’s all you’re getting for that, bc I’m tired. Really all I can say is pirates are cool, Greek pirates are even better, and if you liked this chapter pls let me know what you thought, bc I am always, always curious. :)


	6. Close Your Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luc single handedly starts a revolution. Kind of. Neil finally starts to set his plan into motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another long chapter! Yay!
> 
> TW for lots and lots of bleeding, and violence in general.

**The French Revolution 1789**

VI

Luc Lavigne dreams far too often of death. 

The thing is, it doesn't exactly terrify him. Not like it probably should. 

He tries not to think about it.

The house is terribly quiet at three in the morning. 

All the shadows seem to stretch, becoming not just hideous but also monstrous, reaching. He sometimes feels as if they are tangible enough to brush fingers up his spine. 

Luc has formed a horrible habit of wandering the halls of the Lavigne manor in the dead of night, when he can't sleep. 

Which is all the time. 

Tonight, though. Tonight is different. 

He wanders because it’s all he knows how to do. It's a rhythm that he falls into without thinking, but that night, he has no intention of dreaming at all. He sneaks a glance at the monstrous clock at the end of the hall for perhaps the fifth time in as many minutes. 

Fuck it, no one is going to care if he’s just a little bit early. 

It’s all he can do to not sprint down the marble stairs and risk slipping, consequently waking up everyone in the entire manor. He hasn’t quite reached that level of self destructive. 

It is by muscle memory that he makes his way through the dark and sleeping house, twisting around the hideously fancy furniture that litters every inch of space, screaming opulence and wealth with every piece. He makes it to the servant’s exit unscathed, slipping out undetected. 

He has done this just enough times to be good at it, but not enough that it has quite lost its thrill. 

The moon seems to laugh at him for that thought, but he doesn’t care. 

The drowsy horses nicker softly when he enters the stables, but he shushes them, murmuring softly as he reaches his mare, King. She nuzzles his hand for treats that he doesn’t have and he smiles at her. 

“We must be very quiet,” he tells her softly, sliding open the door to her stall and leading her out. “France must sleep for just a little longer.” She snorts her agreement. 

Luc thankfully had the forethought to keep her tack nearby, so it barely takes him anytime to saddle her and mount. They are out of the stables in moments, trotting along the back of the property, on the way to the forest that borders it. 

By the time they reach the tree line, they’re flying. 

Luc loves the feeling, the sweet night wind in his hair and the stars wheeling above them. It's the drum of the hoofbeats and the running, running, running out of time, but maybe, just maybe, in a good way. 

It's the thought of _how fleeting, how precious._

_I will never be here again, no matter how many times I try to recreate this moment. It won't be the same._

That kind of running out of time. 

It's melancholy, of course, but it makes every breath that much sweeter. Luc has to believe that. 

He has to, or he might just go crazy.

It feels like he blinks, and they're breaching the other side of the forest, and Paris becomes a sprawling monster in front of them.

The path slowly transitions from flattened grass, to trampled, beaten earth, to cobblestone, and then they are through the mighty gates of the city, King's hooves echoing like gunshots as Luc guides her to a walk. 

The scattered torchlight does nothing to penetrate the oily darkness. 

If this was one of Luc's endless nightmares, the shadows would move. 

But it isn't, and they don't. 

So Luc ignores them: the occasional silhouette in the mouth of an alleyway, the ghost of laughter leaking into the street through a pub doorway, the lone figures that roam the otherwise empty sidewalks. 

He navigates the city almost without thinking, although he doubts he could do the same in broad daylight. Everything always looks different under the weak light of the moon, and he has memorized the texture of Paris under its watchful eye. 

It takes longer to reach the Cheval de Troie than it did to actually reach the city from the Lavigne manor, but eventually, they reach it, and Luc wastes no time in dismounting and handing King off to a half asleep stable hand. 

He has no idea how much the kid was promised to be there, he looks barely over fifteen, but he doesn't really care at that moment. 

Luc takes the rickety stairs two at a time, barely even out of breath at the top, and slams open the door, startling Jean so much that he spins and nearly falls flat on his face in the process. 

"Good lord, Lucas Lavigne," he hisses, "don't you knock?" Luc winces. 

"Don't call me that," he says, instead of apologizing, because he knows that Jean would probably punch him for it, no matter how warranted it was. 

"I can call you whatever I please," Jean proclaims, straightening rather impressively, his regal grace back on full display. "I am your superior." 

"You are mistaken," Luc says. "We are not soldiers." 

"Indeed, just the cavalry. Here to save ourselves." 

Luc laughs, because _, God,_ _it's starting, it's starting, it's starting._

_It's starting._

Change is a drug, and they are all thoroughly addicted. 

“Where’s Jeremy?” He asks, used to seeing the smiley blond in close proximity with Jean at all times. 

“Rounding up said cavalry,” Jean replies, glancing at the doorway behind Luc as if Jeremy is going to appear there out of thin air. “They should be back soon.” 

Luc lets the silence settle over them for a moment, and Jean does nothing to break it. 

“Are you scared?” Luc askes, at last, quietly. 

Jean regards him for a moment. 

They have known each other for years. 

Their parents used to run in the same circles, where the nobility fought tooth and nail to earn their place as close to the throne as possible, disguising their plots against each other in fancy parties and superfluous flaunts of their wealth while in the very same city, thousands starved to death every day. 

That was before Luc’s mother died. 

Before Jean was forced out of his inheritance for no concrete reason, and left to navigate the feral streets of Paris by himself. 

They had gone very quickly from knowing of each other, to really knowing each other, to being willing to fight and die for each other. 

Luc doesn’t know another person he would more willingly change the world with. 

“Terrified,” Jean says, his voice just as soft. “But where would we be, if we ceased feeling fear?” 

Luc smiles, and Jean smiles back, and he’s right. 

Fear is a weapon, if wielded correctly.

Luc just hopes it will be enough. 

Without much warning, Luc’s thoughts stray to a reoccurring dream he has. Or maybe it was a daydream. He can’t remember. 

It was actually one of the happier dreams he has experienced. 

The details are fuzzy and slip easily out of his grasp if he thinks too hard about any of it, but he is pretty sure it takes place in an apple orchard, full of sun soaked grass and lazy shadows. He imagines the sky to be a shade of blue just a tiny bit brighter than is actually possible, and the sun to be just a tiny bit bigger than it should be. 

Everything is larger than life, in that daydream apple orchard of his. 

He visits it often. 

But for some reason, that night, the daydream feels more like a memory than anything he could have come up with in his head, because he swears he hears someone speaking. 

_Will you remember?_ An unrecognizable voice says in his head. _When it’s your turn?_

_I’ll try,_ another voice responds, and the words are more familiar than the first. _You know I will._

Luc frowns to himself, feeling slightly off balance, for reasons he can’t explain. 

Just then there are footsteps on the stairs, several pairs of them by the sound of it, and then Jean is standing taller, and Jeremy is appearing at the top of the stairs, a wild, mischievous grin dancing across his face, and Luc’s heart trips over itself. 

_It’s starting._

_I'm ready,_ Luc thinks. _I'm ready._

The thing is, no one is ever truly ready. 

But Luc can pretend to be. 

+++

They take to the streets like shadows, trying, and ultimately failing, to keep quiet. 

Not that it matters much anymore. 

They are not here to be quiet. 

They are here to start a war. 

A revolution, to be more specific. 

More people join them as they march to the Bastille, lighting torches and taking up drinking songs. 

By the time they make it even halfway to the giant prison, it is no longer a march, but a riot, bloodthirsty and vengeful. 

Luc keeps Jean at the edge of his vision, the violence boiling under the surface of everyone’s skin making him restless, shivery. He feels as if there is a clock in his chest, and it has stopped. Time has run out. 

The Bastille comes into view, finally. 

The crowd cheers, the sound quickly dissolving into a battle cry. 

Luc breaths, and his vision doubles, torchlight warping and mixing with the shadows, and for a moment, he is somewhere else entirely, though he has no idea where. 

_Run,_ a panicked voice whispers, softened by time and distance. _Run._

So he does. 

As one, the crowd surges, the tension breaks, and they charge the fortress, unstoppable in their rage. 

“For France!” someone screams, and the call is taken up in an instant. 

Then, several things happen at once:

They reach the walls, the gates, the outskirts. 

Luc loses sight of Jean. Then Jeremy. 

And then the drums begin to sound, a frantic alarm that the bells take up a moment later. 

Bullets begin raining down from the ramparts.

And everything falls, inevitably, into chaos. 

+++

_"Neil. Neil, wake up."_

_Neil opens his eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling, his blood feeling like sludge within his veins, and his heart pounding a relentless rhythm in his head._

_"Neil. Wake up."_

_Neil slides his eyes to the side._

_He can just barely make out Kevin's inky curls in the all consuming darkness._

_"Kev?" He murmurs._

_"Come on," Kevin whispers, frantically. "There's no time."_

_"For what?" Neil asks, but Kevin doesn't reply, grabbing his arm, and then his shoulder, and none too gently pulling Neil out of the bed. Cot._

_Why are they in the infirmary?_

_"Kevin, what's going on?"_

_Kevin doesn't stop, doesn't slow, doesn't soften the weight of what he says next. "Your mother is dead."_

_Neil's heart stops in his chest._

_"What?" he asks, but it's barely more than an exhale._

_Kevin's grip on his wrist is bruising. If he wasn't holding on to Neil, Neil definitely would not have the strength to continue standing._

_"She's dead," Kevin repeats. "Your father killed her, and they're coming for you."_

_Neil trips over his own feet, but Kevin keeps him from falling on his face, dragging him down into the catacombs of the palace._

_Babylon sleeps above them, oblivious to the fact that Neil's life has just shattered to pieces._

_His ankle throbs, and distantly, he remembers the day before, in the apple orchard._

_With Riko._

_And that snake._

_“Kevin,” Neil says, trying to twist out of his grip. “Kevin, stop.”_

_Kevin whirls on him, and it stops Neil short._

_There is a panic, a fear in his eyes that Neil has never seen before. He looks seconds away from falling apart._

_“Time’s up,” Kevin says._

_“I’m not ready,” Neil whispers, and Kevin shuts his eyes, just for a moment._

_“You have no choice,” he whispers back. “We have no choice.”_

_Shouts echo down the catacomb corridors, drawing closer, bringing torchlight. Bringing fear._

_Kevin takes Neil by the shoulders. “Go,” he hisses. “Never stop running. Never stay in one place. Be anyone but yourself, and never be one person for long.”_

_“Kevin,” Neil says. The shouting grows closer._

_“You have fifty chances, fifty tries. We cannot let them win this.”_

_“Wait.”_

_“And Neil,” Kevin says, shaking him just enough so he could feel it. “Neil, remember. Whatever you do, you must remember yourself. You must remember me.”_

_Neil stares at him, and he lets go, pushing Neil away, gently._

_“Promise me,” Kevin says._

_“I promise,” Neil whispers. “I promise.”_

_“Set it free,” they hear someone say. It sounds like Riko._

_“Go,” Kevin urges. “I’ll find you.”_

_Neil takes a step back, unable to tear his eyes away from Kevin’s face._

_“Go!” Kevin shouts. There is a sound like the hissing of snakes, amplified to a terrible vibrato._

_Neil’s ankle throbs._

_“Abram, run,” Kevin says, torchlight blooming behind him as the soldiers approach._

_So Neil does._

_He runs._

_And he doesn’t stop._

+++

Luc pushes open the large, ornate wooden door at the end of the corridor, and is confronted with his own reflection. 

He looks a little wild; his breath is elusive, and adrenaline courses through his veins.

It is habit that traps him there, in a never ending staring contest with himself. Habit forces him to look and keep looking.

He has his father’s face. His father’s hair. 

His mother’s mouth. 

But his eyes. 

His eyes are all his own. 

One is blue, the other is so dark it could almost be black. It has been like that for as long as he can remember. 

And then there are his scars. 

He counts them sometimes, as a sort of grotesque mantra. There are forty three in all.

They come in bands, thin lines of scar tissue that litter his body in intentional rings. Rings around his fingers, his wrists, his upper arms and ankles. There are two around his throat, one around his waist. 

They have also been there for as long as he can remember. 

His mother pretends they don’t exist. 

His father adds to them in any way he can. 

Luc traces them with his fingers and tries not to wonder where they came from. He rarely succeeds. 

The sounds of fighting are muted this far into the Bastille. Luc had run through the chaos until he couldn’t anymore, searching every corridor for their goal: the weapons storage. He leaves most everyone behind him, sprinting through the mostly empty prison. 

Now, he is so far in, that he can barely hear the shouts over the sound of his own breath. 

He moves to shut the door, dragging his eyes away from his reflection, only to pause, to hesitate. 

There’s a shadow standing next to him. A silhouette. 

Luc sees a glint of metal and whips around, pistol raised and heart kicking into overdrive—

Only to find no one there. 

“What are you expecting that to accomplish?” a voice says, just when Luc is about to dismiss it and move on, echoing out of nowhere and sounding endlessly amused. 

Luc whirls again, searching the shadows for the owner of the voice, tension turning his limbs to steal, his hands steadying. 

“Behind you,” the voice prompts, and Luc spins, back to the mirror, back to his reflection, back to the silhouette that should not conceivably be there, but is anyway. A great, twisting storm of the night itself, but without the stars, without the moon. “There we are,” the voice says. "Remember me?" 

Luc shoots the mirror. 

It's like he sees it in slow motion. 

The bullet penetrates the mirror in almost the exact center, and within a split second a spider web of cracks has appeared across the entire surface, and then the whole thing is shattering, glass raining down on the cold stone floor like brittle shards of ice. 

Silence reigns for a heartbeat, then two. 

Then the voice hums, louder than before, closer than before, almost thoughtfully, and says: "Better luck next time." 

The gun slips from Luc’s fingers, though he can’t remember deciding to let go of it. 

_Better luck next time._

“What?” He asks, not really expecting an answer, but then he looks up and it’s right there. 

_He’s_ right there. 

Death.

_Andrew,_ his mind supplies. 

_What?_

“I’m not dying,” Luc says, as goosebumps erupt over his skin, dragging a shiver up his spine. 

Death tilts his head to the side, ever so slightly. 

“You’re bleeding,” he says. 

Luc looks down, a protest already on his lips, only to freeze. 

His side is black with it. Blood, that is.

“Oh,” he says, quietly. 

Death takes a step back, drawing Luc’s eyes back up. 

“I didn’t notice,” he whispers. 

Death takes another step back. 

“Obviously,” he says, but his voice is tight. 

Luc frowns. 

_Andrew,_ his mind supplies, again. 

“Andrew,” Luc says, though he’s not entirely sure why. He ghosts his fingers across his side, only to press down when he finds the material of his shirt hot and soaked. 

He barely feels it. 

Death, Andrew, whoever he is, freezes.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” Luc asks. Andrew says nothing. “Why do I know it?”

For a moment, he blinks, and the stone walls turn to wood. The stale air becomes heavy with salt, and he is halfway convinced that if he looks, his hands will be covered in bruises from pounding on an unyielding door. 

“Because I told you,” Andrew answers. 

Luc stares at him. 

“Why do I feel like we’ve done this before?”

“Because we have.”

And then, it’s like a little door is unlocked in his chest, unleashing a little river to waterfall down his ribs, and suddenly, he remembers. 

It gets quieter every time. The remembering. 

It has slowly become less like drowning and more like sinking below the surface of a still lake. 

Less like being forced to relive every death he has ever experienced, and more like running his fingers over them, one at a time, like one would do with a shelf of dusty books. 

All of his dreams suddenly make sense. 

“There you are,” Andrew says. Luc sways. 

Footsteps pound down the corridor just outside the door, and shouts follow. 

“I can’t die,” Luc says, his heart clenching. “Not yet.”

“That is not your choice to make,” Andrew replies. 

Luc’s breath hitches in his lungs, getting stuck somewhere between the base of his throat and the back of his mouth. 

“I can’t,” he says again. “We’re so close.” 

“You will always be so close to something,” Andrew points out. “You will always be two steps away from what you want most. There will always be just one more thing you simply must get done. The cycle of what the world calls living is ruthless and unending, but everyone must learn how to let it go, eventually.” 

Luc looks at him, taking in his dull voice, his defensive posture. 

“Relearn,” he says. 

Andrew pauses. 

“ _I_ must relearn how to let it go,” Luc says. “Everytime.” 

Andrew looks away. 

Lus is getting dizzy. His vision is going fuzzy, hazy, burry, and he fights to ignore it. It only sort of works. 

“What if I made you a deal?” 

That gets Andrew’s attention. 

“I need more time,” Luc says. “Not a lot, but enough. Enough to end this, or start it, I guess. Give me more time, as much as you see fit; name your price, and I will pay it.” 

Andrew regards him quietly. 

Not for the first time, Luc wishes he could see Andrew’s face. He wants to see if it’s just as blank as his voice, or if it has cracks in it, if it has tells. 

He wants to be able to take the mental image of Death carved in marble and break it into a million pieces, until all that’s left is what’s real, what’s breathing. 

“Why?” Andrew asks at last. 

“Why?” Luc repeats. 

“You are the martyr that no one asked for,” Andrew says. “Why would you give up so much for one life?” 

Luc pulls his hand away from his side, looking at the deep red that coats it with a frighteningly calm detachment. He breathes deeply, deliberately. Gravity has grown claws and is trying it’s best to bury him early. 

He doesn’t let it. 

“Because the day I forget to live my life like it’s my last, is the day I no longer deserve another chance.” 

Andrew is silent for another heartbeat. Luc waits. 

“What would you give me?” Andrew asks finally, and Luc has to back track in their conversation. 

“What would you take?” He shoots back. 

Andrew looks away. 

Luc breathes in, then out. “Because I will give you anything.”

“Don’t say such stupid things,” Andrew snaps, and his voice is biting, scornful. 

Luc smiles. “Try and stop me,” he says. 

Andrew turns back to him, and Luc swears he sighs. 

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. I will give you until sunrise.” 

Luc stares at him, shocked despite himself. 

“But,” Andrew continues. “There will come a day when I ask you for something, and you will give it to me.”

“Anything,” Luc breathes. “Anything you want.”

“I want nothing,” Andrew says, but it sounds almost automatic. Like it’s something he’s said to himself over and over again, like repeating it might just make it true. 

Luc smiles again. “We’ll see,” he says. 

“Sunrise,” Andrew says. 

“Sunrise,” Luc agrees, and then he blinks, and Andrew is gone. 

He looks first at the shattered mirror, but he can’t even see himself in it, let alone Andrew’s shadowy silhouette. Then he looks at his side. 

He can’t tell if it’s stopped bleeding or not. It doesn’t really matter anymore. 

He feels nothing as he bends to pick up his fallen pistol, nothing as he reloads it. A comforting numbness has settled in his bones and he wraps it tighter, clinging to it like a shield. 

“Sunrise,” he whispers to himself, and plunges back into the maze of the Bastille. 

+++

The next few hours pass in a blur running, and fighting, and bleeding, and bleeding, and bleeding. 

Luc scours almost the entire prison, searching for that vault full of gunpowder that they need so desperately, while outside the prison walls, the people rage, and the soldiers gun them down from the ramparts. 

He knows he’s on borrowed time. He knows. 

It just makes him all the more desperate. 

And he finds it, eventually. 

The soldiers guarding the doors to the ammunition room don’t see him coming, and when they finally do, it’s too late. 

The sight of all the gunpowder in that room is like another boost of adrenaline, and he’s running again, towards the sound of voices, reinforcements. 

“I found it,” he says, as soon as he comes across a group of men that he doesn’t know. They’re not wearing uniforms, and they don’t question him. 

“Where?” one asks, eyeing Luc warily, and Luc points them in the right direction. 

“Where are the others?” Luc asks, before they can walk away. 

“With the governor,” someone answers, and then Luc is running again, the corridors passing in blurs and the noise from outside muted. 

He reaches the governor’s study in no time at all, throwing open the doors and effectively shocking the room into silence. 

Three men are holding the governor at gunpoint, while his guard bleeds out in the corner, but as soon as Luc opens the door two of the men switch to train their guns on him. 

Luc puts a placating hand up, out of breath, but for a moment, nobody moves, and Luc swears he sees fear in their eyes. 

Which is. 

Odd. 

Then one of the men lowers their gun and says, “Luc?”

It’s Jean. 

Luc’s eyes lock on his, and suddenly, the world slams into focus again, the edges of the room sharpening and the sound hollowing out. 

Luc hadn’t even realized it was off in the first place. 

“Jean,” he says, still out of breath, but less so. “We found it.” 

Jean blinks several times, shaking his head a little, as if to clear it. He turns back to the governor, raising an eyebrow. 

“It’s over,” he says. The governor doesn’t look at anyone, staring down the far wall, his pride stitching his shoulders together and cementing his face into a haughty impassiveness. “We’ve won.” 

There’s a stretch of silence, where all Luc can hear is his own breath, and then the governor says, quietly, “You have won nothing.” 

Luc steps farther into the room. The governor still doesn’t move.

“You are surrounded,” Jean reminds him. “We have the ammunition stores, and there is a mob outside, calling for your blood.”

The governor says nothing. 

And suddenly, blindingly, Luc is fed up with all the nothing. With the silence. With the never ending, stale pride. 

He blinks and he’s across the room, slamming a hand down on the mahogany desk and leaning into it, pitching his voice low and quiet. 

“Now is not the time to remain rigid,” he says, and the governor’s eyes widen. “Refuse to bend and all you will do is break.” 

Silence reigns, suspending that moment in time like a dew drop clinging to a blade of grass, and with the silence comes a sickly sweet feeling that Luc can’t quite place at first. 

Then the governor’s eyes stray to a point just beyond Luc’s shoulder, so Luc glances up at the mirror behind his head, and suddenly, it makes sense. 

The room is charged with fear. 

Because there, just behind Luc’s shoulder, stands Death. 

Luc has no idea what they see, what the governor sees, but whatever it is, they’re terrified of it. 

“So which is it?” he continues, forcibly ripping his eyes away from the mirror. “Are you going to bend, or are you going to break?”

The governor’s mouth thins into a line, and Luc catches the exact moment the fight leaves his eyes. 

“Fine,” he says, so quietly that Luc almost doesn’t catch it. “But let God’s wrath rain upon you, and Heaven remember your treason.”

Luc just smiles, pushing off the desk to stand tall again. 

“Oh, someone will remember,” he reassures him, adjusting his sleeves. “But it won’t be heaven.”

At that, Luc glances at Jean and nods, taking a step back, out of the way.

“Take him to the roof,” Jean says, and then everyone is moving, and talking, and all Luc can do is stare at the mirror on the other side of the room.

Andrew stares right back at him. 

The door slams open with a resounding crack as the soldiers push it open and escort the governor through, and Andrew turns his head towards the sound, ever so slightly. 

It is in that moment that Luc realizes, he can see the bottom half of Andrew's face. 

There is no light coming from the window, the sun is still stubbornly hiding below the horizon, but for the first time in his murky, endless memory, the torchlight dances across Andrew’s jawline, tracing his lips and hinting at the line of his nose, where usually there is just deep, unending shadows.

And Luc realizes that he is all together unable to look away. 

Andrew looks back at him, and Luc swears, he _swears_ he sees the corner of Andrew's mouth quirk up, just a little. 

It's mocking almost, there and gone, but it pins Luc to the spot. 

He blinks, and suddenly Andrew is right in front of the mirror, like he was never trapped within its confines in the first place, and the more Luc thinks about it, the less sure he is about anything. 

Luc blinks again, and Andrew is closer than before. 

"You have a face," Luc says, the words spilling out of his mouth without his permission, filling the shrinking space between them. 

Andrew's mouth quirks again, there and gone.

Blink and you miss it. 

"Luc," Jean says, poking his head back in the room and looking at him expectantly. "Come on, you'll want to see this." 

Luc blinks again. 

"Surprised?" Andrew asks, just as Luc turns his attention to Jean.

"Um," he says, glancing at Andrew and then glancing away. "Yes." Then, to Jean: "I'm coming." 

Jean smiles, his eyes alight with something very close to victorious pride, disappearing from the door frame and correctly assuming Luc will follow. 

He does.

And Andrew follows him. 

The entire way down the corridor and up the stone stairs he is painfully aware of Andrew's presence at his back. 

Like tickling, delicate dread.

Like terror wrapped and hidden in the confines of intrigue. 

Like pain softened with a kiss. 

Something terrible that somehow isn't. 

Death follows Luc up the stairs to the ramparts of the Bastille, and they arrive at the top just in time to witness the governor raising a white flag to the dark, unforgiving sky. 

It barely takes a moment for the mob below to realize, and within seconds the sound triples. 

Paris rejoices. 

Luc breathes. 

_In_

_Out_

"They don't know what they are cheering for," Andrew says, from just behind him. "Not yet at least." 

Luc looks at him over his shoulder. 

"Yes they do," he says. "Yes they do. They cheer for change." 

Andrew's expression doesn't shift, his mouth an unforgiving line. 

"Change has a price," he says. "Everything has a price." 

Luc laughs, once, humorlessly. "Of course," he says. "Of course it does. Nothing is truly free. No one is truly free." He pauses, casting his gaze to the horizon. To the skyline of the city. 

It's not exactly beautiful. 

It’s too crowded and corrupt, too telling of the pain and suffering that those winding streets have witnessed, but in that moment, Luc thinks that perhaps not every moment needs to be drenched in beauty to be breathtaking. 

"But maybe we should be," he continues. "Maybe we fight, without knowing exactly why, because there is something in our souls that yearns to belong to no one at all. To no one but ourselves." 

Andrew is quiet, but Luc doesn't give into the urge to check if he is still there. He knows he is. 

"What a lonely ambition," Andrew says at last. 

Luc hums, eyes still on the skyline. "Maybe." He glances back, then. Andrew doesn't seem to be looking at him but he says it anyway. "You'd know, wouldn't you?" 

Andrew doesn't move. Doesn't flinch. Doesn't twitch. 

Despite that, Luc somehow feels as if he has struck a chord. 

He opens his mouth to say more, only to be derailed suddenly as a hand comes to aggressively ruffle his hair. 

"Talking to yourself again Luc?" Jean asks, releasing his head only to drape an arm across his shoulders. The governor and the other soldiers are taking their leave, disappearing down the stairs. "I thought we'd moved past this." 

Luc sputters, momentarily, caught off guard. 

"And what if I am?" he asks, once he has regained some of his balance and most of his composure. The wound in his side throbs, but dully. Bearably. 

Jean laughs. It is a quiet, rare thing, and Luc attests it to the victory they are practically bathing in, but it doesn't make it any less novel. 

"I'd ask what was so important that you had to resort to talking to yourself about it," he says, and Luc smiles with him, indulgently, but he doesn't feel the joy, the giddiness. 

Andrew still has not moved. 

"I was," he hesitates, pulling out of Jean's grip to relieve the pressure on his side. "Thinking -" 

"Out loud," Jean cuts in, and Luc shoots him a dirty look. Jean just keeps smiling.

"Yes," Luc allows. "I was thinking out loud about the-" he stops again. Has to find the strength to start again. He frowns, mostly to himself. "The loneliness." 

Jean's smile fades, his eyes returning to their usual serious state. Luc almost regrets opening his mouth. 

"Of what?" Jean asks. 

"Freedom," Luc replies. 

“The pursuit of freedom,” Andrew corrects. “No one is truly free, remember?” 

Luc looks at him, and Jean looks at his feet. 

“What makes you think freedom has to be lonely?” Jean asks, after a moment. 

“Does it not?” Luc asks, still looking at Andrew. “What can be lonelier than belonging to no one?” 

“Is that what freedom means?” Jean shoots back. 

“Being no one,” Andrew replies to Luc’s question, ignoring Jean. “Or being forgotten. Or belonging to everyone and yet being irreversibly unknown, nevertheless.” 

Luc shuts his eyes. 

“Yes,” he says, to both of them, his mind scrambling to keep up with both conversations. 

“Bullshit,” Jean says, and both Andrew and Luc look at him. He’s shaking his head, running his thumb over his lower lip like he always does when he’s thinking. 

“You cannot just refute the truth if you do not like it,” Andrew says, even though Jean cannot hear him. 

“I think freedom means being able to choose who to belong to-“ Jean cuts himself off, looking up at Luc and frowning. “But that’s not right either because we don’t _belong_ to people. People cannot be owned.”

“Yes they can,” Andrew says. 

And Luc almost stops breathing because he swears he can hear something other than cool, white, blankness in Andrew’s voice. 

He sounds. 

Bitter, almost. 

“Yes they can,” Luc whispers. 

Jean frowns at him. 

“They shouldn’t be,” he says. “Maybe freedom is having choices. Being able to choose.” 

“Choose what?” Luc asks.

“Anything,” Jean replies. “Everything. Why are we having this conversation?”

“I don’t know,” Luc whispers. “I don’t know.” 

“Whatever you are thinking,” Andrew says, and Luc can’t tear his eyes away from him. “Stop.”

“Why?” Luc asks. 

Jean says, “What?”

Andrew says, “Stop.” 

Jean takes a step closer to him, and Luc can’t keep himself from stepping away. 

Away from Jean and closer to Andrew. 

Andrew doesn’t move. 

“Luc,” Jean says. “What’s wrong?” 

“I’m fine,” Luc says. 

It sounds hollow, even to his ears. 

His side aches. 

The sky’s not getting light yet, but Luc can feel it. 

The anticipation. 

The inhale before the exhale. 

And abruptly, he’s angry, or maybe just frightened, or terrified, and he has never been very good at holding onto his anger. 

It always ends up spilling everywhere, staining and drenching and making a mess. 

“You look like you are seconds away from running, little rabbit,” Andrew says, from right next to him. “But where would you go?”

And just like that, Luc snaps. 

“Don’t,” he says, his voice breaking, just a little.

“I didn’t say anything,” Jean says, and Luc spins away from both of them. 

“You do not get to accuse me of running when you won’t even show me your face,” he whispers to the horizon, knowing Andrew will hear him and Jean will not.

“That is not the same thing,” Andrew says. 

“What?” Jean asks. 

Luc spins back around to face them. 

"Listen," he says. "Listen. I have spent almost every moment of every day of my life in fear. I live it. I _breathe_ it. And we can stand around and talk about what freedom really means, but we don’t know shit.” He throws an arm out at the crowd below them. “They don’t know shit. We have never tasted freedom in our lives.” 

“That doesn’t mean we can’t fight for it,” Jean says softly. 

Luc looks at Andrew defiantly, challengingly. 

“Yes,” he says, still looking at Andrew. “Exactly.” 

Jean makes a vaguely confused noise. 

Andrew says nothing. 

“Luc, what is going on?” Jean asks, and Luc forces his eyes away from Andrew. Forces himself to smile. 

“I’m fine,” he says, relieved when it sounds more convincing than before, at least. 

Jean glares at him. 

“There is no version of the universe in which I would ever believe you when you say that.”

Luc’s smile comes easier then. 

“That’s probably for the best,” he says, slipping gratefully back into the comfortable territory of easy banter. 

Jean rolls his eyes. 

“We are not done here,” he says, pointing a menacing finger at Luc and beginning to back up, towards the stairs at the end of the ramparts. “We are going to talk about this, at length, and over a cup of something hot.”

“We are?” Luc asks, not quite following him yet, Andrew’s presence behind him rooting him to the spot. 

“We are,” Jean says. “Existential crises are not to be trifled with.” 

That makes Luc laugh, just a little, which hurts his side so he stops. 

“Now let’s go,” Jean says, already descending the stairs and disappearing behind the stone wall. “We have a victory to celebrate.”

“Go on ahead,” Luc tells him. “I’m coming.” 

Jean makes an impatient sound, but he doesn’t stop, so Luc closes his eyes for a moment, sucking in a deep breath like it can lend him strength. 

It doesn’t. 

He turns around to face Andrew anyways. 

Only to stop in his tracks. 

Andrew just looks at him, his face blank, collected. 

His _face._

Luc has forgotten how to breathe. 

“Oh,” he says, unable to say anything else. 

Andrew raises his eyebrows slightly. 

God fucking shit he-

Everything about Andrew is pale, like he was carved from marble and precious metals long ago, all sharp cheekbones and severe eyebrows. 

His skin is colorless, and his hair is just a different shade of colorless, but his eyes. 

His eyes are a piercing, unnerving gold. 

Gold as the dawn. 

“Oh,” Luc says again.

“Surprised?” Andrew asks, echoing himself from earlier. 

“No,” Luc says, quietly. “Yes. I don’t know.” 

“Happy?” Andrew asks, and there’s that bitterness again, though his face betrays nothing. 

Luc looks at him, something a little tragic making a home in his rib cage. 

“I don’t even know what that word means anymore,” he whispers. 

Andrew hums. “You owe me twice now,” he says. 

Luc huffs out a breath, a smile curling in the corner of his mouth without his permission. 

“Figure out what you want,” he shoots back.

“I want nothing,” Andrew says, immediately. 

“Sure,” Luc says, nodding along, “And that whole conversation was just for fun. You don’t care at all.”

And there it is. A crack in his mask. 

Andrew narrows his eyes, looking away for just a moment, but Luc couldn’t miss it, even if he wanted to. 

“You don’t think you want anything,” Luc says. “But you do. You do.”

“To want is to be human,” Andrew bites out. 

Luc frowns at him. 

“Are you not?” he asks. “Human?” 

Andrew blinks, and Luc’s entire world darkness in an instant, the little light that had been present somehow leached out of the very air, taking the warmth with it. 

It’s back just as quickly as it had gone. 

“Not fully,” Andrew says. 

Luc holds up his hands, eyeing the rings upon rings of scars that adorn his skin. 

“Am I?” he asks. 

Andrew hesitates. “Not fully,” he says softly. 

Luc hums, letting his hands drop back to his side. 

“That’s what I want,” he says, out of nowhere, after an endless moment. 

Andrew just looks at him. 

“To be human,” Luc clarifies. 

“Why?” 

Luc refuses to look down at the state of his side. 

The sun should be rising any minute now. 

“Because I’m sick of dying,” he says simply. 

Andrew looks away. 

“I think I got the piece from this life already,” Luc tells him, tracing one of the many scars around his wrists. “I think my father gave it to me, without knowing what it was.” 

Andrew says nothing. 

“There are fifty, right?” He says, grasping at a memory that he doesn’t remember acquiring. “What happens when I get them all? And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I know you do.” 

Andrew doesn’t answer right away, but Luc has nowhere else to be. He waits. 

“You get to take my power and give it to someone else,” he says, after what feels like forever. 

And Luc didn’t really know what he was expecting, but that wasn’t it. 

“Oh,” Luc says. Then: “what happens to me?” 

Andrew frowns at him. 

“Do you even know what those pieces are?” he asks. 

Luc frowns right back. “No,” he says. “No one really bothered to fill me in.” 

“They’re called Remnants,” Andrew says. “They’re-” Andrew pauses, seeming to collect himself. “They’re pieces of the Grim Reaper’s soul.” 

Luc blinks. “Your soul?” 

But Andrew’s already shaking his head. “I’m not the Grim Reaper,” he says, and Luc glances at his scythe in obvious confusion. “Not really. I just-“ he pauses again. “Became him.” 

Without warning, the sound triples, as Luc is discovering it has a nasty habit of doing. 

_Become me,_ a memory whispers, from somewhere far away and far too close, all at the same time. All of his scars ache. _Become me, become me, become me._

_That is my price._

“So,” Luc says slowly, once he is able to. “I am collecting the pieces of the Grim Reaper’s soul, in order to take his power away from you and give it to someone else.”

It’s not really a question, so Andrew doesn’t answer. 

“And I’m being killed because of it,” Luc says, finishing his own thought. 

It’s true, so Andrew doesn’t add anything to that either. 

“Ok,” Luc says. 

Andrew gives him a strange look. 

“Ok?” He asks.

“Yes, ok,” Luc says. “What else is there to say?"

Andrew, once again, says nothing. 

Luc raises an eyebrow. “Exactly,” he says. “I have two options, the way I see it,” he continues, “Keep my head down and keep dying, or collect all the Remnants and actually change something.”

“You have no idea if that will even work,” Andrew points. “You have no idea what will happen to you.” 

“Guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we?” 

Andrew stares at him. 

“Why?” He asks. 

“Because what else is there to do? Because if I don’t try, why am I fighting at all? What the fuck am I fighting for? Because I’m sick of losing myself every time I close my eyes. Are you not?”

Andrew closes his eyes. 

“I will push you over the side,” he says. 

“Do it,” Luc responds. “I’m already dying. I’ll just drag you with me.” 

Andrew cracks open one eye, peering at him. 

“This won’t work,” he says, but there is something vulnerable in his voice. Something raw. 

It betrays just how much he wants it, that tantalizing, tremulous scrap of vague hope that Luc is offering him. 

And in that single, blinding moment, Luc decides that he will do anything to get Andrew out. To get them both out. 

“I will get you out, Andrew,” he says, his thoughts spilling into words, coming as close to Andrew as he dares without touching, without consciously deciding to move his feet. “I will find you your freedom, and mine, I promise.”

And Andrew.

Andrew looks abruptly, profoundly angry.

It's fathomless. “Don’t you dare make promises that you are unable to keep," he says, his voice deadly. 

"I'll keep it," Luc promises, heaping promise on top of promise. "I'll keep it if it kills me." 

"You say that a lot," Andrew says. 

"It's all I'm good at," Luc replies. 

“What, dying?” 

“Yes. And keeping promises.” 

“Luc?” Jean asks, at the very base of the stairs. He must have gotten halfway out of the Bastille before realizing that Luc wasn’t behind him and doubled back. “Seriously, who are you talking to?” 

Luc glances at him, and then back at Andrew. 

The sky is growing light behind his head, casting a weak halo around his pale hair. The irony is not lost on Luc. 

“It’s almost sunrise,” Luc says. Andrew doesn’t turn around to look. 

“Luc?” Jean asks again. 

“Sunrise, Abram, Death,” Andrew says. Luc smiles. 

He doesn’t ask how Andrew knows that name. _Abram._

Apparently there are some pieces of his soul that are stubborn enough to carry over into every life. 

The next breath he pulls in is the most painful thing he has ever experienced. It rips him open on the way down, fire making its way across his ribs. 

His vision goes completely black for one moment, then two. 

He presses a hand to his side, though he knows that it won’t make a difference. 

“Luc,” he hears Jean say again, and the bright sound of alarm has invaded his voice. “Luc, what’s wrong?” 

“Nothing,” Luc says, but he doesn’t recognize his own voice, and between that moment and the next, he’s swaying, his balance lost. 

He reaches a hand out to steady himself against the rampart wall, and then Jean is there, grabbing him and gently lowering them both to the ground as Luc loses the fight with gravity. 

“‘M fine,” Luc protests, his voice barely above a whisper. 

“You’re bleeding,” Jean says, guiding Luc to rest upright against the wall, his hands going to brush Luc’s jacket out of the way, only to freeze. “Oh my god,” he says quietly.

Luc’s entire side is black with blood, and the stain travels from the white of his shirt to the deep blue of his trousers. 

There is no coming back from a wound like that. From that much blood loss. 

“See?” Luc murmurs. “I told you. It’s nothing.”

Jean drags his eyes up from Luc’s side to his face, and the anguish in his eyes startles Luc. 

“Don’t,” he says, his voice strangled. He shakes his head as he brings a hand up to brush Luc’s hair out of his eyes. “Don’t say that. Don’t you fucking dare. What were you _doing,_ just _standing there—_ ” 

“Hey,” Luc says, because he doesn’t like that look at all. “Jean, I’m fine.”

“Stop,” Jean says, choking on the words. “Stop, you are not.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Luc.”

“Jean. Jean, look at me.” Luc grabs Jean’s hand, squeezing weakly. Jean clutches it like a lifeline. “I’m okay.”

He needs Jean to understand. That his time is already up. That it’ll be over soon, so really, he’s fine. 

Jean is shaking his head again, his eyes dangerously bright. And that just won’t do. 

Luc’s breath hitches as he tries to sit up more, pain lancing through every nerve in his body. 

“It’s dawn,” he says, desperately needing Jean to understand. Needing that look to disappear from his eyes. “It’s only just begun.”

“Shh,” Jean says. Luc ignores him. 

“Finish it,” he insists. “Find Jeremy and make sure you both live to see freedom.”

“Luc.”

The next breath Luc pulls in doesn't quite reach his lungs. 

“Let me go,” he whispers.

Jean shakes his head again, and a tear slips free. “No.”

“Yes,” Luc insists 

“Luc, no.”

“Yes.”

“Ready?” Andrew asks, and Luc finds him kneeling on his other side. 

His eyes snag on Andrew’s and suddenly he can’t look away. 

“Yes,” he whispers. 

“Luc,” Jean says, pulling at his hand, but Luc can barely feel it. “Luc, don’t.”

“Close your eyes,” Andrew murmurs, just as his hand comes up to cover them, and the last thing Luc knows before the darkness consumes him, is the pale, victorious lavender of the sky as the sunrise defeats the night. 

  
  


**Present**

X

Neil has always been the type to rise with the sun, if he was ever able to sleep in the first place. 

There simply aren't enough hours in a day. Not for him. 

He has lived so many lifetimes, and it is never enough.

So, he is the only person truly awake during the entire drive to Edgar Allen University. 

To Evermore. 

He would not be able to sleep, even if he wanted to. 

Kevin, on the other hand, is out cold, dragged under by alcoholic claws. It's the only way he will be able to face what comes next. 

About two months have passed. 

Two months of tiptoeing around the truth as Kevin side-eyes him into submission. 

Two months of giving away just enough of himself to deeter any questions, and keeping the rest out of sight, out of mind.

Letting it resurface only when he is alone. 

Only when he's lonely. 

Which, if he is honest, is all the time. 

But Neil has never been honest. 

So. 

Two months have passed, and in that time, his bare bones of a plan have solidified, and now he's ready. 

This is his last chance, and he intends to make the most of it. 

Only Kevin and Renee know what he's really coming for. 

He wants to keep it that way. 

It takes far more out of him to lay eyes on the Evermore stadium than he had originally thought. That building houses almost every single one of his greatest fears. 

“Someone wake up Kevin,” Wymack says from the front, but Renee is already working on it, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

It takes her a couple of tries, but eventually he rouses, and once his eyes are open, they sharpen, his gaze immediately seeking out Neil’s. 

“Morning sunshine,” Matt says cheekily from the seat in front of Kevin’s.

“Fuck you,” Kevin returns automatically. 

“It’s not even morning,” Dan points out from beside Matt. 

Kevin doesn't respond that time, having finally noticed the stadium looming over them, big enough and dark enough to swallow them whole. 

“Kevin,” Neil says, although he’s not exactly sure why. He’s never been the one to comfort people, but this feels different. “Kevin,” he says again. 

That time Kevin tears his eyes away from the bus window, very real pain written all over his face. 

“This is it,” Neil says, slipping into the easy privacy of French. At this point, the others don’t even bat an eye. “This is the last chance we have.”

Kevin laughs, but it sounds strangled and halfway to hysterical. 

“Not helpful,” he snaps. 

“I’m not trying to be helpful,” Neil throws back at him. “I’m reminding you. You have something to fight for besides yourself. I have everything to lose. Stay near Renee or Coach and you’ll be fine.” Kevin swallows, nodding weakly. “We have survived too much to fail now.” 

Kevin closes his eyes, and Wymack stops the bus. 

“Alright Foxes,” he says loudly, stirring the sleepers and commanding attention, like always. “We are not here to start any fights.” Someone snorts. Seth, probably. “I’m serious. If you cannot manage to be civil to anyone, for fuck’s sake, don’t talk to anyone. Josten.” Neil looks up, affecting the most innocent look he can come up with and most definitely fooling no one. “I am going to make this as clear as I possibly can. You have a word count tonight. Exceed fifty words and I will make you run a marathon. Renee will be counting. Just fucking think before you speak, understand?” 

Neil nods. Wymack sighs. 

“Kevin,” he says, and Kevin looks at him. “Can you handle it?” 

Kevin’s expression solidifies into something determined. He sneaks a glance at Neil and says, clearly, “Yes.” 

“Matt, Dan, Renee,” Wymack says next. “Stick near them. Try to stay away from Ravens.”

There is a chorus of _yes, Coach,_ and then they are filing off the bus and heading for the court. 

“Distract him for me,” Neil says to Kevin as they pass the locker room and near the inner court. He can hear music drifting faintly through the walls. 

“I know what I need to do,” Kevin replies, his voice cutting and still drenched with fear. 

“Good,” Neil says. “If I’m not back by the time we need to leave-“

“I’ll come look for you, I know.”

“Don’t bother.” Kevin gives him a sharp look, but Neil just smiles sadly at him. “If I don’t come back by twelve, there will be nothing left of me to come looking for.”

“Don’t say that,” Kevin says, softly. “Don’t.”

So Neil doesn't. 

Instead, as they near the court, the doors swing open to welcome their team to the festivities, he says, quietly enough that only Kevin will hear, “Stay with Renee,” and then he does what he has always done best. 

The court doors swing closed behind them with a resounding thud, and Neil disappears into the crowd. 

+++

Neil’s plan is simple. 

At least. It’s as simple as it can possibly be. 

It goes something like this: get Riko talking. That’s Kevin’s job. Get him to talk about how close the Moyiyama’s are to losing everything and attempt to avoid provoking Riko into murder. 

While that is happening, Neil will be hovering. If Riko sees him, it’s all over. There is no doubt that Riko would recognize Neil in an instant. But he will be listening to every word that Riko says, waiting for just enough hint to the whereabouts of the last piece. 

That’s the easy part. 

After that, Neil has to find the piece. 

He hopes with everything he has that Kevin was right and the piece is still somewhere within Evermore. It would be terribly inconvenient if they discovered that it was actually with the main branch in New York. 

The main thing is keeping Riko away from Neil, and keeping Kevin from having a panic attack in the middle of distracting Riko. 

Piece of fucking cake. 

The others don’t even notice when Neil makes his quiet departure, blending easily into the crowd and the dimly lit room just as he has done a thousand times before. 

He watches from afar as they slowly split up in little groups and start mingling. 

They missed dinner on purpose, courtesy of last year, where Seth apparently got in a very violent fight with one of the Breckinridge Jackals members. This year, the Jackals could only make it for the dinner portion of the banquet, so it ended up being a non-issue. 

The Foxes make little waves wherever they go, but that’s to be expected, as they are probably the most hated team in the district. 

No one spares Neil a second glance. No one knows his face, after all. He’s not a player. 

The appearance of the Ravens is almost instantaneous. They seem to melt out of the shadows, and within seconds, they have Kevin cornered, along with Renee, Matt, and Dan. 

It takes a surprising amount of self control to keep from charging in there and punching Riko in his stupid, entitled face. 

He’s not close enough to catch what Riko says first, but as he nears he hears Kevin say, “I am not yours. Not anymore.” 

Riko’s answering grin is grotesque. “Oh Kevin,” he says. “You will always be mine.” 

Dan has to forcibly hold Matt back, and it almost doesn’t work. 

“Kevin,” she says. “We have nothing to say to him. Let’s go.”

“That’s right Kevin,” Riko says, his voice dripping with mockery. “Go run along with your new team to your new coach. Let them waste your talent and your life.” 

Kevin shoots Matt and Dan a look over his shoulder, and Renee comes up to stand next to him, offering her quiet support. 

“It’s fine,” Kevin tells them, but it sounds like he’s still trying to convince himself. He turns back to Riko. “I do actually need to talk to you.”

Riko raises his eyebrows, but his shock quickly smooths over with calm indifference. 

“What makes you think I want to listen?” he asks. 

“I think I found him,” Kevin says, cutting straight to the point, and just like that, he has Riko’s full attention. 

“Where?” Riko demands, in Japanese. 

Neil had anticipated this, and he’s thankful he had the hindsight to force Kevin to help him polish his grasp on the language. He’s passable at it, at best, so it takes all of his concentration to try and catch every word of their conversation. 

That is his first mistake. 

He’s not paying enough attention to his surroundings. 

His second mistake is circling the little entourage to listen from the other side. 

“In Palmetto,” Kevin is saying, still in Japanese. 

“Keeping an eye on you,” Riko guesses, and Kevin nods along. 

Neil is so busy trying to make out what Kevin says next that he doesn't notice the person stopping beside him. 

Not until it’s too late. 

At the last second, his instincts force him to turn, bringing him face to face with another achingly familiar fragment of his past, just as an achingly familiar voice says, disbelieving, “ _Luc_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Andrew: I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts  
> Neil: the what  
> Andrew: nothing 
> 
> ANYWAYS
> 
> We actually have several orders of business, and by that I mean like two. Or three. Yeah three. So buckle in. 
> 
> FIRST OF ALL, you may perhaps have noticed that absolutely stunning art placed right smack dab in the middle of the chapter there, and I know it blessed your eyes bc it blessed mine. It is by none other than @chubbytomato who is amazing and I am in awe of their art skills, also there is more to come. Get excited. Omg. 
> 
> SECOND ORDER OF BUSINESS. History facts times my dudes. My friends. My beloveds. 
> 
> Anyways. 
> 
> So. The French Revolution. You may have heard of it. 
> 
> The storming of the Bastille on the afternoon of July 14, 1789 is in fact one of the events that kicked off the French Revolution, and according to Wikipedia it was a “flashpoint,” of the Revolution, whatever that means. The Bastille was a giant fortress prison armory thing, and it was a symbol of the monarchy’s abuse of power, representing royal authority. 
> 
> At the time of the attack, it only housed seven prisoners, and a butt ton of weapons. 
> 
> The seven prisoners in question were: four forgers, the Comte de Solanges (inside for 'a sexual misdemeanor') and two lunatics (one of them was an English or Irish man named Major Whyte who sported a waist-length beard and thought he was Julius Caesar, and the other was Auguste-Claude Tavernier, who had tried to kill the king thirty years earlier).
> 
> Also, the governor’s name was Bernard-Rene de Launay and he did order a cease fire and then when he was being taken away by the revolutionists the crowd got angry and killed him. Then I think they put his head on a stake. So that’s awkward fo him. 
> 
> What a wild time. 
> 
> Ok THRID ORDER OF BUSINESS. This is about halfway through the fic, and if you are reading it in one sitting all the way through, this is an obligatory rest stop. Stand up. Stretch some. Get a glass of water. If it is past twelve at night GO TO SLEEP. Pls pls pls take care of yourselves, bc I said so. 
> 
> Alright that’s it I’m done talking now, as always let me know what you thought bc my curiosity becomes me :)


End file.
